The use of volumetric scanned weather radar reflectivities for the identification of convective storm characteristics

Abstract

Convective thunderstorm development is an almost daily event over South Africa in the summer months. These storms are often accompanied by severe weather, such as hail, lightning, strong gusting surface winds, flash floods and tornados. The weather radar is an excellent tool for operational nowcasters and researchers to interrogate the characteristics of convective storms. Volumetric scanned weather radar has become a common method to acquire radar reflectivity data for the analysis of convective storms. This led to a large pool of information in the radar reflectivity data set available for the user. Unfortunately, the volume of data makes the storm analysis process tedious is it nearly impossible to extract characteristics of convective storm without some data processing method. Some of these processing methods, such as Vertical Integrated Liquid Water and Hail Kinetic Energy extracted from volumetric radar reflectivity fields, are described. These methods isolate and identify characteristics of convective storms and are used to study storms causing crop damages. However, it is also required to predict the propagation and evolution of convective storms. The structure of a convective storm holds an important key regarding the propagation and evolution characteristics of a convective storm. A processing method, called the Storm Structure Severity method, have been developed as a part of this study here and is used here to identify the structural characteristics of convective storms. This method is a new approach to the extraction of convective storm characteristics from volumetric scanned radar reflectivity