Summary

Doppler velocity data can provide a lot of useful information for meteorological applications, including ground clutter removal from radar reflectivity data, exploitation of vertical wind profiles, algorithms for detection of dangerous phenomena mainly in convective storms (mesocyclone, downburst).
  • The Doppler effect is the change in frequency and wavelength of a wave for an observer moving relative to the source of the waves.
  • As the targets move slightly between each pulse, the returned wave has a noticeable phase difference or phase shift from pulse to pulse.
  • Doppler weather radars are using this phase difference (pulse pair difference) to calculate the precipitation's motion.
  • Doppler radars only measure the radial component of velocity (because they only measure the change in the target’s range).
  • The transverse component of velocity is not sensed, so the total velocity of the target is unknown