Wind profiler

The data synthesized from wind direction and speed is very useful to meteorological forecasting and timely reporting for flight planning.

The duration of the transmission determines the length of the pulse emitted by the antenna, which in turn corresponds to the volume of air illuminated (in electrical terms) by the radar beam.

Delays of fixed intervals are built into the data processing system so that the radar receives scattered energy from discrete altitudes, referred to as range gates.

The Doppler frequency shift of the backscattered energy is determined, and then used to calculate the velocity of the air toward or away from the radar along each beam as a function of altitude.

The source of the backscattered energy (radar “targets”) is small-scale turbulent fluctuations that induce irregularities in the radio refractive index of the atmosphere.

The longer pulse length means that more energy is being transmitted for each sample, which improves the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the data.

[1] Radar wind profilers may also have additional uses, for example in a biological context to complement large-scale bird monitoring schemes.

[3] These type of radars have been used to study the interactions of different freezing levels and atmospheric rivers on flooding in lowland mountains of the western US.

Due to the attenuation characteristics of the atmosphere, high power, lower frequency sodars will generally produce greater height coverage.

[1] This article incorporates public domain material from Meteorological Monitoring Guidance for Regulatory Modeling Applications (PDF).