Open AccessImproving Wind Profiler–Measured Winds Using Coplanar Spectral Averaging
Author(s) -
Robert Schäfer,
S. K. Avery,
K. S. Gage,
Paul E. Johnston,
D. A. Carter
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
journal of atmospheric and oceanic technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.774
H-Index - 124
eISSN - 1520-0426
pISSN - 0739-0572
DOI - 10.1175/jtech1672.1
Subject(s) - wind profiler , meteorology , environmental science , doppler effect , ultra high frequency , acoustic doppler current profiler , spectral line , remote sensing , range (aeronautics) , wind speed , geology , radar , physics , computer science , telecommunications , materials science , astronomy , composite material
A method is presented that increases the detectability of weak clear-air signals by averaging Doppler spectra from coplanar wind profiler beams. The method, called coplanar spectral averaging (CSA), is applied to both simulated wind profiler spectra and to 1 yr of archived spectra from a UHF profiler at Christmas Island (1 October 1999–30 September 2000). A collocated 50-MHz wind profiler provides a truth for evaluating the CSA technique. In the absence of precipitation, it was found that CSA, when combined with a fuzzy logic quality control, increases the height coverage of the 1-hourly averaged UHF profiler winds by over 600 m (two range gates). CSA also increased the number of good wind estimates at each observation range by about 10%–25% over the standard consensus method.