Browsing by Author "Bringi, V. N., advisor"
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Item Open Access Application of the variational method for correction of wet ice attenuation for X-band dual-polarized radar(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2011) Tolstoy, Leonid, author; Bringi, V. N., advisor; Chandrasekar, V., advisor; Notaros, B., committee member; Kummerow, C. D., committee memberIn recent years there has been a huge interest in the development and use of dual-polarized radar systems operating at X-band (~10 GHz) region of the electromagnetic spectrum. This is due to the fact that these systems are smaller and cheaper allowing for a network to be built, for example, for short range (typically < 30-40 km) hydrological applications. Such networks allow for higher cross-beam spatial resolutions while cheaper pedestals supporting a smaller antenna also allows for higher temporal resolution as compared with large S-band (long range) systems used by the National Weather Service. Dual-polarization radar techniques allow for correction of the strong attenuation of the electromagnetic radar signal due to rain at X-band and higher frequencies. However, practical attempts to develop reliable correction algorithms have been cumbered by the need to deal with the rather large statistical fluctuations or "noise" in the measured polarization parameters. Recently, the variational method was proposed, which overcomes this problem by using the forward model for polarization variables, and uses iterative approach to minimize the difference between modeled and observed values, in a least squares sense. This approach also allows for detection of hail and determination of the fraction of reflectivity due to the hail when the precipitation shaft is composed of a mixture of rain and hail. It was shown that this approach works well with S-band radar data. The purpose of this research is to extend the application of the variational method to the X-band dual-polarization radar data. The main objective is to correct for attenuation caused by rain mixed with wet ice hydrometeors (e.g., hail) in deep convection. The standard dual-polarization method of attenuation-correction using the differential propagation phase between H and V polarized waves cannot account for wet ice hydrometeors along the propagation path. The ultimate goal is to develop a feasible and robust variational-based algorithm for rain and hail attenuation correction for the Collaborate Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA) project.Item Open Access Attenuation correction of X-band polarimetric Doppler weather radar signals: application to systems with high spatio-temporal resolution(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2015) Gálvez, Miguel Bustamante, author; Bringi, V. N., advisor; Colom-Ustariz, Jose G., advisor; Jayasumana, Anura, committee member; Pezeshki, Ali, committee member; Mielke, Paul W., committee memberIn the last decade the atmospheric science community has seen widespread and successful application of X-band dual-polarization weather radars for measuring precipitation in the lowest 2 km of the troposphere. These X-band radars have the advantage of a smaller footprint, lower cost, and improved detection of hydrometeors due to increased range resolution. In recent years, the hydrology community began incorporating these radars in novel applications to study the spatio-temporal variability of rainfall from precipitation measurements near the ground, over watersheds of interest. The University of Iowa mobile XPOL radar system is one of the first to be used as an X-band polarimetric radar network dedicated to hydrology studies. During the spring of 2013, the Iowa XPOL radars participated in NASA Global Precipitation Measurement's (GPM) first field campaign focused solely on hydrology studies, called the Iowa Flood Studies (IFloodS). Weather radars operating in the 3.2 cm (X-band) regime can suffer from severe attenuation, particularly in heavy convective storms. This has led to the development of sophisticated algorithms for X-band radars to correct the meteorological observables for attenuation. This is especially important for higher range resolution hydrology-specific X-band weather radars, where the attenuation correction aspect remains relatively unexamined. This research studies the problem of correcting for precipitation-induced attenuation in X-band polarimetric weather radars with high spatio-temporal resolution for hydrological applications. We also examine the variability in scattering simulations obtained from the drop spectra measured by two dimensional video disdrometers (2DVD) located in different climatic and geographical locations. The 2DVD simulations provide a ground truth for various relations (e.g., AH-KDP and AH-ADP) applied to our algorithms for estimating attenuation, and ultimately correcting for it to provide improved rain rates and hydrometeor identification. We developed a modified ZPHI attenuation correction algorithm, with a differential phase constraint, and tuned it for the high resolution IFloodS data obtained by the Iowa XPOL radars. Although this algorithm has good performance in pure rain events, it is difficult to fully correct for attenuation and differential attenuation near the melting layer where a mixed phase of rain and melting snow or graupel exists. To identify these regions, we propose an improved iterative FIR range filtering technique, as first presented by Hubbert and Bringi (1995), to better estimate the differential backscatter phase, δ, due to Mie scattering at X-band from mixed phase precipitation. In addition, we investigate dual-wavelength algorithms to directly estimate the α and β coefficients, of the AH = αKDP and ADP = βKDP relations, to obtain the path integrated attenuation due to rain and wet ice or snow in the region near the melting layer. We use data from the dual-wavelength, dual-polarization CSU-CHILL S-/X-band Doppler weather radar for analyzing the coefficients and compare their variability as a function of height, where the hydrometeors are expected to go through a microphysical transformation as they fall, starting as snow or graupel/hail then melting into rain or a rain-hail mixture. The S-band signal is un-attenuated and so forms a reference for estimating the X-band attenuation and differential attenuation. We present the ranges of the α and β coefficients in these varying precipitation regimes to help improve KDP-based attenuation correction algorithms at X-band as well as rain rate algorithms based on the derived AH.Item Open Access The study and real-time implementation of attenuation correction for X-band dual-polarization weather radars(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2008) Liu, Yuxiang, author; Bringi, V. N., advisor; Chandrasekar, V., advisorAttenuation of electromagnetic radiation due to rain or other wet hydrometeors along the propagation path has been studied extensively in the radar meteorology community. Recently, use of short range dual-polarization X-band radar systems has gained momentum due to lower system cost compared with the much more expensive S-band systems. Advances in dual-polarization radar research have shown that the specific attenuation and differential attenuation between horizontal and vertical polarized waves caused by oblate, highly oriented raindrops can be estimated using the specific differential phase. This advance leads to correction of the measured reflectivity (Zh) and the differential reflectivity (Zdr) due to path attenuation. This thesis addresses via theory, simulations and data analyses the accuracy and optimal estimation of attenuation-correction procedures at X-band frequency. Real-time implementation of the correction algorithm was developed for the first generation of X-band dual-polarized Doppler radar network (Integration Project 1, IP1) operated by the NSF Center for Collaborate Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA). We evaluate the algorithm for correcting the Zh, and the Zdr for rain attenuation using simulations and X-band radar data under ideal and noisy situations. Our algorithm is able to adjust the parameters according to the changes in temperature, drop shapes, and a certain class of drop size distributions (DSD) with very fast convergence. The X-band radar data were obtained from the National Institute of Earth Science and Disaster Prevention (NIED), Japan, and from CASA IP1. The algorithm accurately corrects NIED's data when compared with ground truth calculated from in situ disdrometer-based DSD measurements for a Typhoon event. We have implemented, in real-time, the algorithm in all the CASA IP1 radar nodes. We also evaluate our preliminary method that separately estimates rain and wet ice attenuation using microphysical outputs from a previous supercell simulation using the CSU-RAMS (Regional Atmospheric Modeling System). The retrieved rain and wet ice specific attenuation fields were found to be in close correspondence to the 'true' fields calculated from the simulation. The concept to correct rain and wet ice attenuation separately can be also applied to the CASA IP1 network with additional constraint information possibly provided by the WSR-88D network.