Research Projects

Ka Band radars are mainly used for remote study of weakly precipitating and non precipitating cloud structure, their shape, size, motion etc. In particular it can help in studying the properties of tropical warm clouds prevailing in India. Clouds are known to play a dominant and complex role within the Earth’s climate system. They moderate the radiation and energy budget and are an important component of the hydrological cycle. To better understand the role of clouds and to improve their representation in climate models for better short term and long term weather and climate prediction models, observation of cloud fields and their evolution in time is necessary for Indian Atmospheric scientists. Unfortunately, even some of the basic cloud features such as their frequency of occurrence or their three dimensional distribution within the atmosphere are difficult to determine. However, with the improvements in millimeter wave technology, radars have been developed mostly in US and Europe operating at millimeter wavelengths. These radars have proved to be an invaluable tool for studying the clouds. Due to their short wavelengths (compared to weather radars), they are sensitive to small cloud particles and are able to penetrate multi-layered cloud systems. They are the only devices, which can map out the vertical distribution of most clouds under nearly all-weather conditions (except during heavy precipitation). Traditional applications of Ka band scanning radars are study of physics of clouds and precipitation (i.e. information on microstructure and wind dynamics in clouds and precipitation). Doppler and Polarimetric radars have exclusive capability for detection, measurements and recognition of scatterer types as well as the feature of their motions. Scanning capability would help to map continuously the 3D structure of clouds and shallow precipitation and would provide 3D micro-physical and dynamical retrievals for cloud life cycle and cloud scale process studies. This ground-based system would be used for controlled experimentation wherein data can be repeated day in and day out at the same place and time over a specific period of time. It would be a good research tool for scientists. It can also be used as ground truth for validation of space borne systems.