Summary and preliminary analysis of observations from the Radar Wind Profiler (915 MHz) for Cloud Forecasting at BNL Campaign

Description

One of ARM’s Radar Wind Profilers (915 MHZ) was operated at Brookhaven National Laboratory for seven months beginning 20150124 thru 20150729. The observation protocols were different from those routinely used by ARM as they were optimized to provide measurements of dynamics and microphysics during precipitation events while still providing profiles of the horizontal winds during calm conditions. These protocols were tailored to address the following topics- Scientific Objective #1: Quantify dynamics and precipitation microphysics of coastal sea-breeze driven and deeper convective clouds. Scientific Objective #2: Ice and mixed-phase microphysical process designation and analyses using collocated ARM profilers and polarimetric radar Quasi-Vertical Profiles (QVPs) from NEXRAD (KOKX). Scientific Objective #3: Use of profiles of the horizontal wind for testing and validation of short-term cloud advection forecasting for solar energy application. The period when data was collected was a productive one. Numerous winter time snow and liquid precipitation events were observed as well as a significant number of convective events in the spring and summer. In addition to the radar wind profiler observations, observations were simultaneously collected by the nearby US Weather Station NEXRAD (KKOX) and the Brookhaven National Laboratory surface meteorology instrumentation (temperature, pressure, relative humidity, precipitation, precipitation rate, as well as longwave and shortwave downwelling irradiance). We present a summary of the observations collected during this deployment and preliminary analysis of several of the precipitation events.