First Spaceborne Version of Velocity-Azimuth Display Technique for Wind Field Retrieval on Cloud and Precipitation Radar

Abstract

Cloud and precipitation radar mounted on a polar orbiting satellite opens up a new opportunity for global wind observation to improve numerical weather forecasting and prevent weather disasters. However, no related works have been done to retrieve the wind field for spaceborne cloud and precipitation radar. This is mainly because the high-speed motion of satellites makes wind field retrieval complex. This paper developed the first spaceborne version of the velocity–azimuth display (VAD) technique for wind field retrieval, which was originally created for ground-based radar. After derivation of VAD for spaceborne radar, we found that the product of the azimuth of the radar beam and its first harmonic was introduced into the Fourier series of radar radial velocity due to the motion of the satellites. The wind retrieval equations were developed by considering the effects of satellite motion and conical scanning strategy of radar. Numerical simulations of the spaceborne radar showed that the proposed VAD method provided a mean vertical profile of the horizontal wind with high vertical resolution over a large observation swath. Validations on airborne radar data with the same conical scan strategy as the spaceborne radar were carried out to capture the average wind structure in one hurricane event. The real data results demonstrated that the wind-retrieved results by the proposed method were consistent with the ground truth data, indicating the potential use of our proposal for spaceborne radar.