Abstract
Abstract. The German polarimetric C-band weather radar Poldirad (Polarization Diversity Radar) was deployed for the international field campaign EUREC4A (Elucidating the role of clouds–circulation coupling in climate) on the island of Barbados where it was operated from February until August 2020. Focus of the installation was monitoring clouds and precipitation in the trade wind region east of Barbados. Different scanning modes were used with a temporal sequence of 5 min and a maximum range of 375 km. In addition to built-in quality control performed by the radar signal processor, it was found that the copoloar correlation coefficient ρHV can be used to remove contamination of radar products by sea clutter. Radar images were available in real time for all campaign participants and aboard research aircraft. Examples of mesoscale precipitation patterns, rain rate accumulation, diurnal cycle, and vertical distribution are given to show the potential of the radar measurements for further studies on the life cycle of precipitating shallow cumulus clouds and other related aspects. Poldirad data from the EUREC4A campaign are available on the EUREC4A AERIS database: https://doi.org/10.25326/218 (Hagen et al., 2021a) for raw data and https://doi.org/10.25326/217 (Hagen et al., 2021b) for gridded data.
Highlights
Clouds and precipitation play an important role in the Earth radiation budget
Because of the lack of continuous observations, various field campaigns have been performed in the Atlantic trade wind region to investigate in detail the role of shallow maritime cumuli and their relation to air–sea interaction and global circulation: BOMEX 1969
In contrast to most other C-band weather radar systems, Poldirad is equipped with an offset antenna and the antenna is not sheltered by a radome
Summary
Clouds and precipitation play an important role in the Earth radiation budget. Predictions for future climate scenarios show large uncertainties in the contribution of clouds on the overall radiation budget. Detailed radar studies were conducted during the RICO campaign (e.g., Nuijens et al, 2009; Snodgrass et al, 2009; Trivej and Stevens, 2010) and showed the importance of long-range surveillance radar observations with high spatial and temporal resolution. With this in mind the full polarimetric C-band research radar system Poldirad (Schroth et al, 1988) was deployed for EUREC4A on the island of Barbados. – to provide an overview for research aircraft and vessels in the experimental area east of Barbados (see Fig. 1),
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