A Multiple-Doppler Synthesis and Continuity Adjustment Technique (MUSCAT) to Recover Wind Components from Doppler Radar Measurements

Abstract

A new approach is presented to account for a simultaneous solution of the three wind components from at least a pair of Doppler radar observations, which could remove potential drawbacks of an iterative (nonsimultaneous) solution of Cartesian dual-Doppler analysis techniques. The multiple-Doppler synthesis and continuity adjustment technique (MUSCAT) is derived from the extended overdetermined dual-Doppler (EODD) variational formalism that contains the basis for a simultaneous (noniterative) solution of a dual- or multiple-equation system and a mass continuity equation. Necessary accommodations are discussed, including the solutions for a plane-to-plane synthesis (as in EODD) instead of a fully three-dimensional and computationally intensive analysis, owing to the three-dimensional character of the continuity equation. The evaluation of MUSCAT is carried out by first considering real data and then performing numerical tests based on simulated radar observations. The comparative study with EODD applications shows that MUSCAT provides a more regular description of the airflow and that EODD may still contain residual errors that make the retrieved wind components inconsistent. Results from the numerical tests definitely reveal the real improvements of MUSCAT in synthesizing Doppler radar data.