A Short History of Radar Meteorology

Abstract

For what may seem to be a narrow specialization of atmospheric science, radar meteorology has a surprisingly rich literature. Papers including radar observations have appeared regularly in journals of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) for the past 50 years. Radar meteorology conferences are the oldest series of technical conferences of the AMS and have the longest series of conference proceedings. Critical reviews in the formative years and later (Ligda 1951; Wexler 1951; Marshall et al. 1955; Marshall and Gordon 1957; Atlas 1964) served periodically to bring the subject up to date. The widely used textbooks of Louis J. “Lou” Battan (1959, 1973) did much to delineate the field and to establish radar meteorology as a valid discipline. The text of Doviak and Zrnic, now in its second edition (1993), provides a modern synthesis. Other books on the subject are those of Gossard and Strauch (1983), with its focus on clear-air echoes, and of Rinehart (1991), intended for undergraduate students or operational meteorologists. But it was the publication in 1990 of the monumental Radar in Meteorology, conceived as a tribute to Lou Battan by David Atlas and edited by him, that makes it easy to argue that no part of atmospheric science has been better served. And even the history of the subject is available for the reading—the sparkling account of Walter Hitschfeld (1986) and the first 18 chapters (150 pages) of Radar in Meteorology. What accounts for the extraordinary attention paid to radar in meteorology? And, perhaps more to the point, what can we hope to say in this short review that has not already been said?