SEMINAR SERIES and COLLOQUIA

Thanks to the recent deployment of a new staggered triple-PRT scheme within the French operational radar network, it has became possible to collect high quality Doppler and reflectivity data simultaneously up to a range of 250 km. Since November 2006 these long range radial velocity measurements are processed in real time to derive multiple-Doppler winds in a fully automated way within the Northern part of the French territory. The resulting 3D wind fields permit to continuously map the dynamic structure of rain events at multiple scales and allow to rapidly identify changes in wind speed and direction with height, as well as to easily spot key flow features such as convergence, wind shear and frontal boundaries. These products, which are being archived to build a weather database, also compose unprecedented datasets for statistical analysis and model verification purposes, especially now that many meteorological centers are working on new high resolution (~2.5 km), limited area, numerical weather prediction systems that require large amounts of data for validation.

After a description of the experimental setup and data analysis techniques relied upon to operationally produce 3-D multiple-Doppler winds (u, v, w) in the framework of ARAMIS, this study proposes to investigate the value of this new product for research and operational applications, with a special emphasis on nowcasting and model verification purposes. After a first assessment of the quality of the retrieved wind fields in a variety of weather situations, operational multiple-Doppler analyses are compared against outputs of the new cloud resolving model AROME that runs operationally at Météo-France since October 2008. The potential of these wind data for research applications is also investigated through a description of the experimental radar setting envisioned for the field phase of the international HyMEx research program (2011-2012).

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