Storm Microphysics and Kinematics at the ARM-SGP site using Dual Polarized Radar Observations at Multiple Frequencies

October 15, 2014

Alyssa Matthews

Committee: Steve Rutledge (advisor) Russ Schumacher Brenda Cabell Chandra Venkatachalam (Electrical and Computer Engineering)

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Abstract

This research utilizes observations from the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility at the Southern Great Plains location to investigate the kinematic and microphysical processes present in various types of weather systems. The majority of the data used was collected during the Mid-latitude Continental Convective Cloud Experiment (MC3E), and utilizes the network of scanning radars to arrive at a multi-Doppler wind retrieval and is compared to vertical wind measurements from a centrally located profiling radar. Microphysical composition of the storms are analyzed using a multi-wavelength hydrometeor identification algorithm utilizing the strengths of each of the radar wavelengths available (X, C, S). When available, a comparison is done between observational analysis and simulated model output from the Weather Research Forecasting model with Spectra-bin Microphysics (WRF-SBM) using bulk statistics to look at reflectivity, vertical motions, and microphysical identification.