Toward deducing the 3-D thermodynamic structure from only wind fields - A validation study using simulated dataset

This paper presents a newly designed thermodynamic retrieval algorithm wher eby one can deduce the potential temperature and pressure gradient fields i n a three dimensional space using only 3-D wind measurements, The latter ca n be observed by Doppler radar in real cases. In order to achieve this purp ose, all three equations of motion are implemented in a single cost functio n. Then, given the detailed wind information, and through the process of va riational minimization, these equations are solved simultaneously in a leas t square sense. The products of the approximated solutions are the three di mensional potential temperature, and the pressure gradients along any direc tion, Some preliminary studies using model-generated data sets show that th is is a feasible tool for the retrievals, and satisfactory results can be o btained when the performance of this method against various types of input data errors is investigated. Compared to the traditional method proposed by Gal-Chen, the advantage of this scheme is that the vertical structure of t he thermodynamic variables can be determined without requiring a point of i ndependent observation of the pressure and temperature for each layer. In a ddition, this method can easily be applied to an area with topography, It i s believed that this algorithm can be of particularly useful in many Dopple r weather radar applications.