X-band, Portable Doppler Radar

Portable Doppler Radar

Many important meteorological processes occur at subkilometer-kilometer scales (finescale) and these are difficult to observe with traditional stationary meteorological radars. The most critical limitation is that stationary radar deployment is usually relatively far from target area. This results in finescale structures being unresolvable due to beam spreading, topography, and earth curvature between stationary radars and the targets. There is a need for finescale observations of these phenomena in order to better understand the mechanisms involved in their formation and maintenance.
X-POD (X-band, POrtable Doppler radar)was installed in 2006 at MRI as a ground-based radar observation platform. An important aspect of X-POD is its portability (i.e., small-size and low power consumption). X-POD can deploy close to regions of interesting meteorological phonomena and continuous finescale observations can be conducted for as long as the phenomenon remains within the observation range. It is expected that X-POD will increase opportunities to observe more cases than would result if only stationary radars are used. We have plans that X-POD will be used to collect data in various mesoscale areas of precipitation, such as landfalling typhoons, convective storms, and orographic snow clouds, and clear-air boundary layer.