APAR Observing Simulation, Processing, and Research Environment (AOSPRE)

The APAR Observing Simulation, Processing, and Research Environment (AOSPRE) is intended to create data sets that simulate results from flights of the Airborne Phased Array Radar (APAR) observing platform. AOSPRE relies on high-resolution simulations of real or idealized weather events as provided by, e.g., the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF; Skamarock et. al., 2019) or the Cloud Model version 1 (CM1; Bryan and Morrison, 2012). AOSPRE takes a user-specified flight plan through such atmospheric simulations, together with radar scanning instructions (e.g., series of rotation and tilt angles), to determine which portions of the atmosphere APAR pulses might "see" during such a flight. Details of the thermodynamical and microphysical fields at these locations are extracted from the model output, and passed to routines from the Cloud-resolving Radar Simulator (CR-SIM; Oue et al., 2020). The CR-SIM routines compute various radar moments (reflectivity, radial velocity, etc.) from this model data, and AOSPRE writes these results in the CfRadial File Format (Dixon and Lee, 2016).

Some main goals of AOSPRE include:

  • providing researchers with realistic (though simulated) data sets as an aid to planning APAR flight strategies, scanning strategies, and analysis techniques.
  • creating datasets useful for testing and developing APAR software processing tools.
  • creating or updating various radar algorithms

The atmospheric models used as input to AOSPRE should ideally be run at resolutions and output time frequencies that are comparable to the spatial and temporal scales of radar observations. In practice, simulations with grid spacing of 100 to 1000 m, and time output of a few seconds to a minute, are probably the resolutions at which AOSPRE is expected to be applied.

APAR

APAR is the Airborne Phased Array Radar, an observing platorm currently under development at NSF NCAR. Learn more about APAR at www.eol.ucar.edu/airborne-phased-array-radar-apar-0.

CR-SIM

The Cloud-resolving Radar Simulator (CR-SIM) derives radar moments from high resolution atmospheric model output. Learn more about CR-SIM at you.stonybrook.edu/radar/research/radar-simulators.

WRF

The Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF) is a numerical weather prediction model used extensively in weather research and real-time forecasting operations. Learn more about WRF at www.mmm.ucar.edu/models/wrf.

CM1

The Cloud Model version 1 (CM1) is designed for detailed idealized simulations of weather systems at resolutions of hundreds of meters to a few kilometers. Learn more about CM1 at www2.mmm.ucar.edu/people/bryan/cm1.

CfRadial File Format

The CfRadial File format is a CF-Compliant NetCDF format for radar and lidar moments in radial coordinates. Learn more about CfRadial at www.eol.ucar.edu/sites/default/files/files_live/private/CfRadialDoc.v1.4.20160801.pdf.