Abstract
One limiting factor in atmospheric radar observations is the inability to distinguish the often weak atmospheric signals from fluctuations of the noise. This study presents a minimum threshold of usability, SNRmin, for signal-to-noise ratios obtained from wind profiling radars. The basic form arises from theoretical considerations of radar noise; the final form includes empirical modifications based on radar observations. While SNRmin was originally developed using data from the 50-MHz profiler at Poker Flat, Alaska, it works well with data collected from a wide range of locations, frequencies, and parameter settings. It provides an objective criterion to accept or reject individual spectra, can be quickly applied to a large quantity of data, and has a false-alarm rate of approximately 0.1%. While this threshold’s form depends on the methods used to calculate SNR and spectral moments, variations of the threshold could be developed for use with data processed by other methods.
Deceased.
