Measurement of Synoptic-Scale Vertical Velocities by Two Nearby VHF Doppler Radars in Very Flat Terrain

Abstract An experimental field campaign to measure synoptic-scale vertical velocities was conducted from 5 to 11 January 1991 in the Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, region, which is in very flat terrain far from mountains. Both the Flatland and the Urbana wind-profiling radars, which are separated by 23.1 km, participated in the campaign. Meteorological sounding balloons were also launched from the Flatland Observatory site. In this study, lime averages are compared of the vertical wind velocity measured directly by both radars in order to help verify the capability of wind-profiling radars to measure synoptic-scale vertical velocities. This comparison, of course, also provides an opportunity to evaluate the performance of both radars. The variance of the vertical velocity observed by the Flatland radar has been previously shown to be dominated by short-period fluctuations with most of the variance occurring at periods less than 6 h. Also, since March 1987 when the Flatland radar began operating nearly contin...