Improvement of the Integrating Velocity-Azimuth Process Single-Doppler Radar Wind-Retrieval Method

Among the single-Doppler radar wind analysis methods, the velocity-azimuth display (VAD), velocity- azimuth process (VAP), and uniform wind (UW) methods are widely used because of their simplicity. A general form of the VAD, VAP, and UW methods is the integrating VAP (IVAP) method, which is based on the azimuth uniform-wind assumption. In this study, the IVAP method is improved by applying the method along natural coordinates. The natural coordinates can be chosen to ensure that the tangential and radial winds are uniform, thereby ensuring the validity of the basic assumption that underlies the IVAP method. The winds at each point of the natural coordinates are retrieved on the osculating circle, in which the IVAP method is employed. The results of the experiments show that retrieval of the wind field using single-Doppler radar data depends not only on the retrieval technique, but also on the characteristic pattern of the wind field. If we know the characteristic pattern of the wind field, we can retrieve the wind field using the IVAP method in the chosen natural coordinates, with higher precision.