Augmenting the German weather radar network with vertically pointing cloud radars: implications of resolution and attenuation

Heske, Christian; Ewald, Florian; Groß, Silke

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-691

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https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-691

Preprints

14 Mar 2025

| 14 Mar 2025

Augmenting the German weather radar network with vertically pointing cloud radars: implications of resolution and attenuation

Christian Heske, Florian Ewald, and Silke Groß

Abstract. A beam-aware columnar vertical profile (BA-CVP) methodology that incorporates data of the national German operational radar network with the aim of augmenting vertically pointing cloud radars is introduced. The method uses polarimetric radar data collected in plan position indicator (PPI) scans of multiple operational radars and considers the contributions of each operational radar in a beam-aware manner. The results of the method are paired with measurements of a vertically pointing cloud radar located in range of the operational radars and compared to measurements of dedicated scanning radars collected in range height indicator (RHI) scans for two different case studies. The combination of side-looking operational radars in the BA-CVP format with a vertically pointing cloud radar allows the simultaneous exploitation of polarimetric multi-frequency observations including radar variables like the differential reflectivity, the dual-wavelength ratio, Doppler fall speed and linear depolarisation ratio measurements to study the microphysical properties of hydrometeors while not having to rely on the availability of dedicated scanning radars. The extracted BA-CVPs based on operational data deliver good results with respect to resolving finer details in radar reflectivity and differential reflectivity when compared to measurements of dedicated radars. Usage of differential phase measurements is discussed as marker for high hydrometeor attenuation affecting the measurements of radars far from the point of interest. For future use of this method, the coverage of the national German operational radar network is studied and recommendations for locations with potential for additional vertically pointing cloud radars are pointed out.

Received: 14 Feb 2025 – Discussion started: 14 Mar 2025

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Journal article(s) based on this preprint

08 Oct 2025

Augmenting the German weather radar network with vertically pointing cloud radars: implications of resolution and attenuation

Christian Heske, Florian Ewald, and Silke Groß

Atmos. Meas. Tech., 18, 5177–5198, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-18-5177-2025,https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-18-5177-2025, 2025

Short summary

Christian Heske, Florian Ewald, and Silke Groß

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

RC1:
'Comment on egusphere-2025-691', Anonymous Referee #1, 09 Apr 2025

See the attachment.

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-691-RC1
- AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Christian Heske, 27 May 2025
  
  Dear Reviewer,
  on behalf of all co-authors of this paper, I would like to express my gratitude and thank you for taking the time to evaluate the manuscript. Your valuable feedback has helped a lot to improve the paper. Please find our replies to your comments in the attachement.
  Kind regards,
  Christian Heske
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-691-AC1
RC2:
'Comment on egusphere-2025-691', Anonymous Referee #2, 18 Apr 2025

This study introduces a beam-aware columnar vertical profile (BA-CVP) method that enhances the utility of Germany's operational weather radar network by integrating its PPI (plan position indicator) data with vertically pointing cloud radar observations. The aim is to improve microphysical analysis of hydrometeors—especially in areas where scanning radars are unavailable. The paper is generally well written and I only have a few comments require clarification.

Line 215-217, I’m a bit confused here as the C-band radar resolution is 50 m and the moving average window size is also 50 m?
Line 221, please elaborate on the reasoning as to why all dual-pol variables require Z based weighting? And how is done?
Line 300, for this paragraph, I’m not sure if I understand the BV-CVP extraction for PPI data. The traditional QVP/CVP method consider distance compared with center point of selection. Can you please demonstrate how the new BV-CVP differs from traditional CVP in this point? Most importantly, at higher elevations, the available scans are sparse, do you mean the BV-CVP can fill the gaps? But this can only be true in this study’s set up when you have more than one radar doing PPI scans nearby right?
Line 355-370, more clarification is needed here, how is hydrometeor induced attenuation is done? By only Z? Please elaborate on this.
Figure 8. Can you please add the difference between BV-CVP vs MIRA? Also, please extend this to Zdr, Kdp, and CC as well. In particular, a vertical profile of mean difference and their standard deviation are needed to quantify the difference.
Figure 11, for the 2^nd case, it seems the higher resolution MHP are overly smoothed to lower resolution as in ISN and MEM, please justify the resolution degradation here.

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-691-RC2
- AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Christian Heske, 27 May 2025
  
  Dear Reviewer,
  on behalf of all co-authors of this paper, I would like to express my gratitude and thank you for taking the time to evaluate the manuscript. Your valuable feedback has helped a lot to improve the paper. Please find our replies to your comments in the attachement.
  Kind regards,
  Christian Heske
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-691-AC2

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

RC1:
'Comment on egusphere-2025-691', Anonymous Referee #1, 09 Apr 2025

See the attachment.

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-691-RC1
- AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Christian Heske, 27 May 2025
  
  Dear Reviewer,
  on behalf of all co-authors of this paper, I would like to express my gratitude and thank you for taking the time to evaluate the manuscript. Your valuable feedback has helped a lot to improve the paper. Please find our replies to your comments in the attachement.
  Kind regards,
  Christian Heske
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-691-AC1
RC2:
'Comment on egusphere-2025-691', Anonymous Referee #2, 18 Apr 2025

This study introduces a beam-aware columnar vertical profile (BA-CVP) method that enhances the utility of Germany's operational weather radar network by integrating its PPI (plan position indicator) data with vertically pointing cloud radar observations. The aim is to improve microphysical analysis of hydrometeors—especially in areas where scanning radars are unavailable. The paper is generally well written and I only have a few comments require clarification.

Line 215-217, I’m a bit confused here as the C-band radar resolution is 50 m and the moving average window size is also 50 m?
Line 221, please elaborate on the reasoning as to why all dual-pol variables require Z based weighting? And how is done?
Line 300, for this paragraph, I’m not sure if I understand the BV-CVP extraction for PPI data. The traditional QVP/CVP method consider distance compared with center point of selection. Can you please demonstrate how the new BV-CVP differs from traditional CVP in this point? Most importantly, at higher elevations, the available scans are sparse, do you mean the BV-CVP can fill the gaps? But this can only be true in this study’s set up when you have more than one radar doing PPI scans nearby right?
Line 355-370, more clarification is needed here, how is hydrometeor induced attenuation is done? By only Z? Please elaborate on this.
Figure 8. Can you please add the difference between BV-CVP vs MIRA? Also, please extend this to Zdr, Kdp, and CC as well. In particular, a vertical profile of mean difference and their standard deviation are needed to quantify the difference.
Figure 11, for the 2^nd case, it seems the higher resolution MHP are overly smoothed to lower resolution as in ISN and MEM, please justify the resolution degradation here.

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-691-RC2
- AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Christian Heske, 27 May 2025
  
  Dear Reviewer,
  on behalf of all co-authors of this paper, I would like to express my gratitude and thank you for taking the time to evaluate the manuscript. Your valuable feedback has helped a lot to improve the paper. Please find our replies to your comments in the attachement.
  Kind regards,
  Christian Heske
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-691-AC2

Peer review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision | EF: Editorial file upload

AR by Christian Heske on behalf of the Authors (27 May 2025) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (04 Jun 2025) by Raquel Evaristo

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (09 Jun 2025)

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (20 Jun 2025)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (23 Jun 2025) by Raquel Evaristo

AR by Christian Heske on behalf of the Authors (11 Jul 2025) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (23 Jul 2025) by Raquel Evaristo

Dear authors,
after reading the manuscript once more, I found a few remaining typos and small mistakes that should be corrected before the publication. They are listed below. The line numbers concern the document with the tracked changes.

Line 56: I believe this should be “within one scan”.

Lines 64-67:
“This and the fact that both QVP methods loose spatial information due to the azimuthal averaging that includes the whole 360◦ PPI measurement range, limit the use of QVP methods in combination with other measurement equipment further away from the PPI scanning radar as the extracted QVPs might not fully correspond to the measurements of the off-site equipment.”
This sentence is too long and very hard to follow. Suggestion:
“This combined the fact that both QVP methods loose spatial information due to the 360° azimuthal averaging limit the use of QVP methods in combination with vertically measurement equipment further away from the PPI scanning radar since the extracted QVPs might not adequately represent the measurements of the off-site equipment.”

Legend of Figure 1: “Shown are also all operational cloudnet sites (yellow) and the two dedicated radar systems (blue) utilized for comparison.”

Line 135: “spatially separated radar systems” (instead of radars).

Legend of Figure 2: Add a period at the end.

Legend of Figure 3: “Dedicated and operational radars are marked red and blue, respectively.” It seems like the colors are reversed in this sentence.

Line 310: Suggest change ”The method therefore automatically puts more weight in the measured volumes that most closely represent the contents of the height bin.”

Line 311: Suggest remove “Following”.
“This procedure allows ...”

Line 352: Add a period at the end of the sentence.

Line 422: Add commas: "which, as seen in Fig. 8 (e), offers mostly gapless coverage..."

Lines 466-467: "In general, the lowest elevation angles are strongly influenced by clutter and therefore little to no reliable signature of hydrometeors for lower altitudes is measurable." This sentence seems to suggest that the lowest scans are consistently unreliable, which is kind of misleading. It is better to include some additional information saying that this is the case for gates close to the radar but not everywhere.

Legend of figure 11: Replace "for a more stratiform time period..." with "for the stratiform time period...".

Line 506: Correct the typo "through the measurement region."

Line 534: "in roughly 3 km height..." I think "in" is not the correct preposition to use here. Suggest rewriting "around 3 km height...".

Line 584: "has to be expected" replace with "was expected."

Legend of figure 13: Close brackets after (b). "MHP (b and differential reflectivity in a BA-CVP"
Line 684: Replace "even finer details" with "even fine details" (finer suggests a comparison : finer than...)

Lines 693-694: "over the whole Germany"

Appendix A: It makes sense to include the corresponding radial resolution and indicate that the different PRF (and radial resolution) correspond to the specific events.

Hide

AR by Christian Heske on behalf of the Authors (29 Jul 2025) Author's response Manuscript

Journal article(s) based on this preprint

08 Oct 2025

Augmenting the German weather radar network with vertically pointing cloud radars: implications of resolution and attenuation

Christian Heske, Florian Ewald, and Silke Groß

Atmos. Meas. Tech., 18, 5177–5198, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-18-5177-2025,https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-18-5177-2025, 2025

Short summary

Christian Heske, Florian Ewald, and Silke Groß

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Short summary

This study proposes a new technique to augment polarimetric radar measurements of the national German operational radar network with vertically looking cloud radars. The method is tested in two different case studies by comparison to dedicated scanning radars revealing promising results. Future usage of the method is motivated by analyzing the coverage of the operational radar network finding advantageous locations with good radar coverage.


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Augmenting the German weather radar network with vertically pointing cloud radars: implications of resolution and attenuation

Journal article(s) based on this preprint

Interactive discussion

Interactive discussion

Peer review completion

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Journal article(s) based on this preprint

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