Education / OutreachScience

Radar CharacteristicsC enter for S evere W eather R esearch

How to Request the DOWs for ResearchAny NSF-sponsored PI can request the DOWs and support from the Deployment Pool. If approved by NSF, deployment costs are covered by Deployment Pool, not individual project grants. Non-NSF PI’s can request DOWs, but not Deployment Pool support. Contact CSWR at www.cswr.org and admin@cswr.org.

DOW6 and DOW7: Dual Polarization and Dual Frequency Radar Systems= 2x speed dual-pol and 45 degree and H/V simultaneous modes*

Rapid Scan Multiple Beam Radar: 7-second volumetric scanning

PAMREX Penn State UniversityThe Pennsylvania Mobile Radar Experiment

(PAMREX) used the DOWs in the fall of 2003 and 2004 to study a wide variety of phenomena

such as the interaction of fronts and thunderstorms with ridges and valleys, terrain-

induced atmospheric circulations, and phenomena owing to atmospheric interactions with Lake Erie. Complex terrain can produce atmospheric circulations capable of triggering

thunderstorms, in addition to influencing already mature thunderstorms and their attendant severe weather. Surface temperature and

roughness differences between Lake Erie and the land surface of Pennsylvania routinely affect

small-scale weather as well with “lake effect” snow bands being perhaps the most widely

known of these lake-induced phenomena.

UNDEO University of Nebraska The University of Nebraska DOW Education and Outreach (UNDEO) project was an NSF-funded

collaboration between the Department of Geosciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and CSWR, conducted in November of 2008. The

project allowed a 15-day on-campus deployment of a DOW for classroom instruction and hands-on

experience.

DROPS Purdue University

Dr. Jeff Trapp, professor in the Dept. of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at

Purdue University, requested one of the

CSWR mobile weather research radars for deployment to West

Lafayette, Indiana from October 21 through

November 18, 2009. Student teams planned

research projects related to the occurrence of

isolated severe and non-severe thunderstorms, mesoscale convective systems, frontal rain

bands and lake-effect snow.

Antenna/Scanning Tx/Rx Products

Dual-Polarization Parabolic0.9° beamwidth

50°/s x 2 frequencies

2x 250 kW0.2 us pulse0.2 us gates9.3-9.6 GHz

Simultaneous ZDR, Rho-HV, Phi-DP, and LDR, staggered

PRT, Z, etc.Records full Timeseries, IQ

TITAN

DOWs deploy to universities to support radar meteorology education. Students design and conduct experiments and analyze DOW data.

Antenna/Scanning Tx/Rx Products

Slotted Waveguide Array0.9° beamwidth

50°/s x 6 frequenciesVolume every 7 seconds

50 kW TWT0.1 us pulse

0.17 us gates9.3-9.7 GHz

Volumetric Z, V, SW, NCP

The DOW Facility is supported by the National Science Foundation through grant 0734001.

* DOWs 6 and 7 can also transmit pure H in one frequency for LDR while using 45 in second frequency, collecting LDR simultaneously with ZDR, Rho-HV, and Phi-DP products.

How to Request the DOWs for EducationUniversities and K-12 can request the DOWs in support of science education. A DOW is brought to the university/school, students and educators are trained in DOW operations, and they then can lead deployments, data collection, etc. A streamlined proposal and review process is in place for short, typically 2-4 week educational deployments. Contact CSWR at www.cswr.org and admin@cswr.org.

MAP 1999

COPS 2007

Left: A low-reflectivity ribbon (LRR) observed by DOW 7 during the VORTEX2 field campaign. ZDR on left, reflectivity on right.

Above: Misovortices embedded in lake-effect snow bands observed during Lake-Effect Snow Project 2010.

Design and Deployment of Quickly Scanning, Dual-Frequency, Dual-Polarization, Dual-Doppler Mobile Radar Network

Joshua Wurman and Karen Kosiba, Center for Severe Weather ResearchKatja Friedrich, University of Colorado at Boulder

Above: DOW observation of a tornado near Quinter, KS during ROTATE 2008

Left: Example fine-scale DOW observations of the hurricane boundary layer for several hurricanes.