ELDORA (ELectra DOppler RAdar)
ELDORA is an airborne, dual beam, meteorological research radar developed
jointly at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), USA, and
the Centre de Recherches en Physique de L'Environnement Terrestre et
Planetaire (CETP), France.
ELDORA mounts on NCAR's Lockheed Electra aircraft. Its two antennas extend
back from the tail of the aircraft and spin about the longitudinal axis of
the aircraft. One antennae points slightly ahead of the aircraft, and one
slightly aft. As the aircraft translates the antennas through space,
ELDORA traces two conical helixes through the atmosphere, essentially
observing the atmosphere with two separate looks within 50-100 kilometers
of the aircraft. The fore and aft looks from ELDORA yield two wind
components for each location in the atmosphere. Applying the conservation
of momentum and mass, a three-dimensional structure of the atmosphere is
produced which can then be sliced through any axis to produce
two-dimensional plots.
The ELDORA radar system consists of five major functional blocks: the RF
signal generator/receiver unit, the TWT high power amplifiers, the signal
processor, the antenna/rotodome system, and the radar control equipment.
Since the radar system consists of two separate fore- and aft-pointing
radars much of the hardware contains two identical modules. Only the basic
signal generation equipment and the radar control equipment do not contain
duplicate modules.
The ELDORA output variables include radar reflectivity, mean radial
velocity, spectral width, and normalized coherent power. These data are
passed to the data recording and display system, thus enabling the data
system to receive all data from both the fore and the aft radars, to tag
it with aircraft position information and to record and display the data.
ELDORA's first deployment was to TOGA COARE in the Solomon Islands in
January and February 1993.
Collaborators
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), USA; Centre de Recherches
en Physique de L'Environnement Terrestre et Planetaire (CRPE), France
http://www.atd.ucar.edu/rsf/eldora/eldora.html
http://www.ncar.ucar.edu/
http://www.CETP.IPSL.fr