THE PERFORMANCE OF WIND PROFILING RADARS FOR WIND-FIELD MONITORING INAIRPORT AREAS COMPARED TO OTHER REMOTE-SENSING AND IN-SITU SYSTEMS

Many meteorological services operate ground-based observing systems fo r wind shear warning. In this study, wind shear data from a 1 GHz prof iler at the airport Zurich was compared with data obtained from the gr ound-based AMETIS 1 system. Despite the short observation campaign (fo ur weeks), the data indicate clearly that the ground-based system unde restimates the shear and that wind. direction data is influenced by to pography. Comparisons were made for both for the basic wind data (spee d and direction) as well as for shear data. Since air traffic is likel y to disturb radar-based wind finding, the effect of overflying aircra ft on the wind data obtained from the wind profiling radar was investi gated. This analysis was based on the quality of the consensus average . While there is undoubtedly an effect on the spectra, the quality of the wind data iself is only marginally affected by air traffic, this e ffect is statistically not significant, The potential of other wind sh ear systems is discussed in qualitative terms.