Open-Source Data Processing Chain for Marche Region X-band Weather Radar

Abstract

In the framework of three projects co-funded by the European Union (EU), an X-band (8-12 GHz frequency range) polarimetric radar was installed in the Marche Region territory (East-Central Italy) at Cingoli municipality, province of Macerata. The radar site is located at about 750 m above sea level and about 30 km away from the Adriatic Sea. The radar, managed by the Marche Region Civil Protection Service, is employed for weather monitoring purposes and is in pre-operational stage. It is known that radar measurements are affected by various sources of error, to be addressed in order to improve the accuracy of final products. Among these, the most important are radar calibration, ground and sea clutter, beam blockage, rain attenuation, wet-radome attenuation, beam-broadening, non-uniform beam filling, vertical variability of precipitation and wireless local-area-network (WLAN) interferences. Nowadays quantitative rainfall estimation using X-band weather radar are essential to meet requirements for flood forecasting, water management and many hydro-meteorological applications. Besides higher resolution, X-band radars are cost-effective compared to S- or C-band radars because of smaller antenna size. On the other hand, main disadvantages of such systems are the large influence of attenuation by liquid water and a relatively short range. In this work, we will present the data-processing chain developed ad hoc in order to remove or at least reduce the sources of error affecting Cingoli radar data. The performance of the data-processing chain was evaluated in the light of case studies related to meteorological events that interested Marche region territory in the last two years. The software was developed using open source technology. The current version of the chain does not take into account the echoes from sea clutter and the attenuation due to wet radome that can be significant at X-band; such issues will be addressed in a future work.