Projects

191001.363513.01J
21-NGI3-127
N/A
6/1/2021
2022-7-31 0:0:0
Completed
$105,972.00
TDR Surface Wind Reduction
Holbach
Heather
FSU
The tail-Doppler radars (TDR) on NOAA hurricane hunter aircraft collect data, specifically spatial coverage of the surface wind field, that has the potential to improve forecasts by the National Hurricane Center (NHC). Forecasters rely on data provided by satellites and hurricane hunter aircraft; however, the spatial coverage of the aircraft-based surface wind speed estimates are limited to being along the flight track or point measurements, leading to an under-sampling problem in which the peak intensity and desired wind radii are unlikely to be observed on any given flight. Collaborating with TDR experts at the NOAA Hurricane Research Division, researchers are developing a method to reduce the lower-level TDR winds to the surface which would provide swaths of data as opposed to a track or single point of data. To do so, they are comparing the TDR wind field from the swath analysis at 1 km altitude (and adjacent levels) to wind surface speeds from dropsonde and Stepped-Frequency Microwave Radiometer (SFMR). This analysis will be performed using data collected since the late 1990s when the TDR fore-aft scanning technique was first employed.