Investigation of vertical winds obtained from vertically pointing and tilted beams of a five-beam 915-MHz wind profiler

摘要

The Department of Energy (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program has operated a 915-MHz radar wind profiler coupled with a Radio Acoustic Sounding System (RASS) since November 1992 at its Southern Great Plains (SGP) Cloud and Radiation Testbed (CART) central facility in north central Oklahoma. The system is designed to provide continuous wind profiles from near the surface (100 m) to 5 km or more and virtual temperature profiles from near the surface to 1.5 km. During normal operation (see Table 1), the system uses four tilted beams (two each in the north-south and east-west vertical planes) and a single vertical beam to determine mean wind and virtual temperature profiles every hour. In this paper we illustrate and compare different methods for calculating w and several statistical variables from profiler data. The results are compared with those derived when the profiler is operated in a vertical-only mode under similar conditions.