Tuesday, March 24, 2015

TTUKa Radar Update

The TTUKa radars observed really good clear air data quality yesterday (23 March 2015). As such, approximately 5.4 hours of dual-Doppler scanning was done. Outside of surveillance test scans, the coordination was in the form of virtual towers at the intersection location. When the data quality was exceptional, we increased the scan speed for better temporal resolution. Alternatively, we slowed the scan speed when data quality were less than exceptional. One of the radar operators also noticed that a smoke plume in the region may have contributed to a sharp increase in data quality / coherency toward the end of data collection. More details to come as we are still processing everything.

Today's efforts (24 March 2015) were considerably less successful. We attempted to sync with ongoing triple Doppler virtual towers at the supersite and radar intersection point, but the data quality were on the low end of marginal. Nonetheless, we collected virtual towers through multiple radar intersection / supersite lidar triple - Doppler blocks between 18:33 and 19:00 UTC. This should several profiles during this time period for comparison. After 19:00 UTC, it was determined that data quality were too poor to warrant further coordinated scanning. We performed another short test scan around 23:00 UTC, but there were still little to no coherent velocity data.

The chance for light precipitation definitely has our attention for tomorrow (25 March 2015). Hopefully there will be enough to suppress second trip echoes and still provide for lidar / radar comparisons.

We have currently used 4604 minutes of the available 7200 minutes.

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