Hourly Wind Profiles in a Region of Frequent Air Traffic -- The Penn State Profiler Network

摘要

For continuous wind measurements, VHF and UHF Doppler radars (wind profilers) are ready for operational deployment. The VHF pulsed Doppler radars operate at about 50 MHz and are capable of measuring the three-dimensional wind field essentially continuously (i.e., at intervals as short as about 5 minutes). Radars currently being manufactured have two modes of vertical resolution. in the low resolution mode the radars can obtain winds at about 1 km intervals throughout the troposphere and lower stratosphere; in the high resolution mode the radars can output winds at about 300 m resolution to as far as the upper troposphere. The article gives a brief summary of the planned Pennsylvania wind profiler network, and uses examples from wind profilers in Colorado to illustrate the improved resolution that can be obtained in the wind structures of travelling weather systems by examining time-height series of wind profiler data. Many upper-air troughs are really rather sharp fronts or wind-shift lines. Reprints (FR)