Stratospheric tropospheric wind profiling radars in the Australian network

Bronwyn K Dolman,Iain M Reid,Chris Tingwell

doi:10.1186/s40623-018-0944-z

Abstract

The Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology completed the installation of a network of 9 new wind profiling radars across mainland Australia in 2017, which complement an existing network of 5 profilers and 5 research systems. This results in a network of 14 operational, and 19 total, profilers across Australia and Davis Station in Antarctica. Four of the new profilers are higher power stratospheric tropospheric systems, designed to measure winds from near ground level to the tropopause, and maintain the upper air network in Australia where sonde launches are no longer available. Wind measurements in the near field of the radar are demonstrated to be both possible and accurate by comparison with co-located radiosondes. Quality control procedures producing winds of sufficient accuracy for presentation to forecasters and ingestion into global numerical weather prediction models are described. The Australian network data are available on the global telecommunications system and are currently being ingested into all major models. First results from impact studies on forecast error reduction in the Australian Community Climate and Earth Systems Simulator show remote stations have the greatest impact.

Highlights

The Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology (AGBoM) installed the last of nine new wind profiling radars (WPRs) across mainland Australia in 2017
The Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology measures forecast error reduction in a 24-hour global numerical weather prediction (NWP) forecast due to data assimilation, with the ability to split out individual observations
STPs using the Doppler beam swinging (DBS) system are used by the Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology to measure winds from near ground to the tropopause in Tennant Creek, Halls Creek, Carnarvon and Longreach

Summary

Introduction

The Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology (AGBoM) installed the last of nine new wind profiling radars (WPRs) across mainland Australia in 2017. A perceived limitation at lower VHF, for radars intended to sample winds to as high an altitude as possible, is the use of large transmitter powers and physically large antenna arrays While this may be true historically, technological developments have led to systems of manageable size utilizing both Doppler and FCA wind measurement techniques. Low-level height coverage, that is retrieving good-quality winds from as close to the ground as possible, is of particular importance when larger antenna array sizes and high powers are employed Addressing these issues for an operational STP system is the topics for the following discussion. These low- and high-mode wind profiles are converted to BUFR format and output to users, and in most cases data are available on the Global Telecommunication System (GTS) and the EUMETNET website

ATRAD operational STP

STP high mode

Halls Creek

Findings

Conclusion