<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//NLM//DTD Journal Publishing DTD v3.0 20080202//EN" "https://jats.nlm.nih.gov/nlm-dtd/publishing/3.0/journalpublishing3.dtd">
<article xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" article-type="research-article" specific-use="SMUR" dtd-version="3.0" xml:lang="en">
<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">EGUsphere</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>EGUsphere</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub"></issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/egusphere-2026-3965</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Application of a Method for Fine-Tuning Differential Reflectivity in an X-Band Phased-Array Weather Radar to a Squall Line</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Yang</surname>
<given-names>Ling</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Xu</surname>
<given-names>Jinyan</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6878-0934</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Xu</surname>
<given-names>Mingliang</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff4">
<sup>4</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Wu</surname>
<given-names>Pengbo</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Chen</surname>
<given-names>Tianyi</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Li</surname>
<given-names>Jia</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff5">
<sup>5</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Wu</surname>
<given-names>Chong</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff6">
<sup>6</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Chen</surname>
<given-names>Chao</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff7">
<sup>7</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>College of Electronic Engineering, Chengdu University of Information Technology, Chengdu 610225, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>CMA Key Laboratory of Atmospheric Sounding, Chengdu 610225, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>Institute of Low-Altitude Meteorological Intelligence Technology, Chengdu 610225, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff4">
<label>4</label>
<addr-line>College of Optoelectronic Engineering, Chengdu University of Information Technology, Chengdu 610225, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff5">
<label>5</label>
<addr-line>HuaYun METSTAR Radar (Beijing) Company, Limited Beijing, 10094, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff6">
<label>6</label>
<addr-line>Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, Beijing 100081, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff7">
<label>7</label>
<addr-line>Guangdong Meteorological Observatory, Guangzhou 510640, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>28</day>
<month>08</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2026</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>37</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Ling Yang et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-3965/">This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-3965/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-3965/egusphere-2026-3965.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-3965/egusphere-2026-3965.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Maintaining the calibration accuracy of differential reflectivity (&lt;em&gt;Z&lt;/em&gt;&lt;sub&gt;DR&lt;/sub&gt;) within 0.2 dB for both X-band and S-band weather radars is a prevailing operational requirement. With the advancement of weather radar detection technologies, X-band phased-array weather radars (XPAR) offer superior spatiotemporal resolution and are particularly advantageous for low-altitude detection. However, they suffer from &lt;em&gt;Z&lt;/em&gt;&lt;sub&gt;DR&lt;/sub&gt; bias caused by the deterioration of antenna isolation, which results from the variation of the normal direction along with changes in the beam pointing angle. To systematically investigate the primary factors affecting XPAR data quality, this study selects synchronized observations from XPAR and an S‑band polarimetric radar (SPOL) over multiple periods, and proposes a refined &lt;em&gt;Z&lt;/em&gt;&lt;sub&gt;DR &lt;/sub&gt;correction algorithm (RC-&lt;em&gt;Z&lt;/em&gt;&lt;sub&gt;DR&lt;/sub&gt;) that addresses four aspects: systematic bias correction, attenuation correction, cross‑polarization isolation degradation compensation specific to phased‑array systems, and correction for anomalous radial interference. For systematic bias, light rain below the zero-degree layer is employed as natural calibration targets, and a weighted correction method (Bias-W&lt;em&gt;Z&lt;/em&gt;&lt;sub&gt;DR&lt;/sub&gt;) based on the mean &lt;em&gt;Z&lt;/em&gt;&lt;sub&gt;DR&lt;/sub&gt; values at three elevation angles whose beam pointing angles are close to the array normal direction (0&amp;deg;) is proposed to mitigate the interference of cross‑polarization isolation on system calibration. Attenuation correction formulas are applied to moderate and heavy precipitation regions. In addition, a 9.4 GHz dual‑polarized microstrip antenna array is modeled using High Frequency Structure Simulator (HFSS) electromagnetic simulations to reveal the variations of antenna gain and 3 dB beamwidth with beam pointing angle. Based on this, a quadratic function correction method for cross‑polarization isolation (QCCPI) is proposed to quantitatively compensate for the degradation bias between different elevation angles. A composite threshold method is adopted to filter out radial interferences in low‑level XPAR observations, further improving the quality of basic data. During a moderate rain event at the ZG100 site, after QCCPI correction, the maximum difference in mean &lt;em&gt;Z&lt;/em&gt;&lt;sub&gt;DR&lt;/sub&gt; among different beam pointing angles decreased from 0.45 dB to 0.27 dB. The proposed RC-&lt;em&gt;Z&lt;/em&gt;&lt;sub&gt;DR&lt;/sub&gt; method is then applied to a squall line event observed at the ZG100 site on June 6, 2023. Spatiotemporal matching and comparison with SPOL data demonstrate that the corrected &lt;em&gt;Z&lt;/em&gt;&lt;sub&gt;DR&lt;/sub&gt; data can more accurately capture the polarimetric signatures of the strong convective core of the squall line. The overall mean &lt;em&gt;Z&lt;/em&gt;&lt;sub&gt;DR&lt;/sub&gt; of XPAR across all elevation angles is corrected from -0.591 dB to 0.226 dB, and the bias relative to SPOL observations is reduced from 0.619 dB to 0.198 dB. This work provides a scientific and efficient technical support for operational quality control and performance evaluation of next‑generation phased‑array weather radars.</p>
</abstract>
<counts><page-count count="37"/></counts>
<funding-group>
<award-group id="gs1">
<funding-source>National Natural Science Foundation of China</funding-source>
<award-id>U2142210</award-id>
</award-group>
<award-group id="gs2">
<funding-source>Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province</funding-source>
<award-id>2022A1515011814</award-id>
</award-group>
</funding-group>
</article-meta>
</front>
<body/>
<back>
</back>
</article>