Fusing Numerical Weather Prediction Ensembles with Refractivity Inversions During Surface Ducting Conditions

This study investigates the use of numerical weather prediction (NWP) ensembles to aid refractivity inversion problems during surface ducting conditions. Thirteen sets of measured thermodynamic atmospheric data from an instrumented helicopter during the Wallops Island Field Experiment are fit to a two-layer parametric surface duct model to characterize the duct. This modeled refractivity is considered “ground-truth” for the environment and is used to generate the synthetic radar propagation loss field that then drives the inversion process. The inverse solution (refractivity derived from the synthetic radar data) is compared to this “ground-truth” refractivity. For the inversion process, parameters of the two-layer model are iteratively estimated using genetic algorithms to determine which parameters likely produced the synthetic radar propagation field. Three numerical inversion experiments are conducted. The first experiment utilizes a randomized set of two-layer model parameters to initialize the inversion process, while the second experiment initializes the inversion using NWP ensembles, and the third experiment uses NWP ensembles to both initialize and restrict the parameter search intervals used in the inversion process. The results show that incorporation of NWP data benefits the accuracy and speed of the inversion result. However, in a few cases, an extended NWP ensemble forecast period was needed to encompass the “ground-truth” parameters in the restricted search space. Furthermore, it is found that NWP ensemble populations with smaller spreads are more likely to hinder the inverse process than to aid it.