Atmospheric Physics Lab

Radarmeteorology

 

Radar meteorology is a branch of physical meteorology, it is the study of the atmosphere, especially clouds and precipitation by using radar as the means of observation and measurement.


One of the main research topics in our lab is the analysis of hazardous weather phenomena using dual-polarization weather radar data – detection, nowcasting, spatiotemporal distributions and relation to climatological conditions of convective storms and accompanying phenomena (hail, extreme precipitation, lightning). In addition we study the spatiotemporal distributions of precipitation intensity and amount over longer periods. As doing research using meteorological radars includes a lot of data processing we also do radar data quality analysis. Our lab is also involved in development of new radar applications.

 

    radar

Convective precipitation on 12.08.2015 that caused damaging hail in several locations in Estonia. Radar horizontal reflectivity (on the left) and hydrometeors classified based on dual-pol radar data (on the right).