Automated Quality Control and Analysis of NOAA WP-3D Airborne Doppler Data and its Use during the 2005 Hurricane Season

John Gamache
NOAA/AOML

Abstract:

The computing power of workstations aboard the NOAA WP-3D aircraft is now great enough to do quality control and analysis of airborne Doppler-radar observations in "real time" aboard the aircraft. In 2004 the analysis scheme was tested in real time aboard the P3, and in 2005 approximately 40 three-dimensional analyses with 4-km horizontal and .5 km vertical resolution were transmitted from the aircraft to TPC. Also transmitted were vertical profiles of wind along the inbound and outbound flight tracks. These profiles have a vertical resolution of 150 meteres and a radial resolution of 1.5 km. In one example these vertical profiles documented the dramatic changes in structure of the wind profiles from the flight in category-5 Hurricane Katrina on August 28 2006, to category-3 Hurricane Katrina during the land fall flight on 29 August. The quality control and analysis method will be discussed during the seminar as well as examples of the analyses. The nature of the data available for assimilation into numerical simulations will also be discussed.