NWC REU 2002
May 12 - July 20

 

 

The Trustworthiness of VVP Wind Estimates

Karly Klein, Alan Shapiro, and Paul Robinson

 

Abstract:

Velocity Volume Processing (VVP) is a simple wind retrieval technique which uses radial velocity data from one Doppler radar to estimate the full wind field. The technique assumes that the wind is constant among x and y, but varies linearly with z (within user-specified volumes). After running a single-Doppler code, the results are checked against an estimate of the winds obtained from a dual-Doppler wind analysis. We hypothesize that the VVP procedure itself can be used to estimate the regions of the wind flow where the technique can be trusted. Tests performed with gust front data suggest that it is possible to quantify the trustworthiness of VVP winds using VVP estimates. These trusted winds can be used as a data source in numerical weather prediction to improve the forecast of weather.

Paper available upon request.