A study on the motion characteristics and their impact on the wind measurement post-processing of the GPS dropwindsonde Part Ⅰ:effects of the wind-finding equations

摘要

Since Global Positioning System dropwindsonde wind measurements are taken in neither a conventional Eulerian framework nor a perfect Lagrangian framework, proper post-processing is necessary to derive conventional Eulerian wind statistics from dropwindsonde measurements. In this study, the equations governing the dropwindsonde motions were first linearized and then analytically solved to explore the effects of the wind-finding equations introduced by Hock and Franklin (Bull Amer Meteor Soc 80:407-420, 1999) when retrieving horizontal winds from dropwindsonde measurements. It is found that the wind-finding equations are essential for calculating turbulence statistics from dropwindsonde measurements. To confirm, numerical simulations of dropwindsonde motions in a pseudo-stochastic wind field were further conducted based on the full nonlinear dropwindsonde motion-governing equations. Based on the simulation results, the present paper showed the effects of the wind-finding equations and the companion paper discussed the impacts of various post-processing/composition schemes on both the mean and turbulent wind statistics composited from pseudo-dropwindsonde measurements.