A FUZZY-LOGIC APPROACH TO DETECTING SEVERE UPDRAFTS

Supercell severe thunderstorms are often associated with bounded weak echo regions (BWERs), three-dimensional structure visible in radar dat a. The presence or absence of a BWER within a storm is therefore impor tant for severe weather forecasting. The various uncertainties associa ted with a BWER's radar profile are taken into account using a fuzzy l ogic approach of generating membership functions to evaluate the rules in a rule base. A fuzzy logic classifier uses the output of these rul es to classify a given region as a BWER, a marginal BWER, or a non-BWE R.