Quality Control Algorithms for the Kennedy Space Center 50-MHz Doppler Radar Wind Profiler Winds Database

Abstract

Abstract This paper presents the process used by the Marshall Space Flight Center Natural Environments Branch (EV44) to quality control (QC) data from the Kennedy Space Center’s 50-MHz Doppler radar wind profiler (DRWP) for use in vehicle wind loads and steering commands. The database has been built to mitigate limitations of using the currently archived databases from weather balloons. The DRWP database contains wind measurements from approximately 2.7- to 18.6-km altitude at roughly 5-min intervals for the August 1997–December 2009 period of record, and the extensive QC process was designed to remove spurious data from various forms of atmospheric and nonatmospheric artifacts. The QC process is largely based on DRWP literature, but two new algorithms have been developed to remove data contaminated by convection and excessive first-guess propagations from the median filter/first-guess algorithm. In addition to describing the automated and manual QC process in detail, this paper describes the extent of the data retained. Roughly 58% of all possible wind observations exist in the database, with approximately 100 times as many complete profile sets existing relative to the EV44 balloon databases. This increased sample of near-continuous wind profile measurements may help increase launch availability by reducing the uncertainty of wind changes during launch countdown.