Evaluation of the Hurricane Research Division Doppler Radar Analysis Software Using Synthetic Data

AbstractThe Hurricane Research Division Doppler radar analysis software provides three-dimensional analyses of the three wind components in tropical cyclones. Although this software has been used for over a decade, there has never been a complete and in-depth evaluation of the resulting analyses. The goal here is to provide an evaluation that will permit the best use of the analyses, but also to improve the software. To evaluate the software, analyses are produced from simulated radar data acquired from an output of a Hurricane Weather Research and Forecasting (HWRF) model nature run and are compared against the model “truth” wind fields. Comparisons of the three components of the wind show that the software provides analyses of good quality. The tangential wind is best retrieved, exhibiting an overall small mean error of 0.5 m s−1 at most levels and a root-mean-square error less than 2 m s−1. The retrieval of the radial wind is also quite accurate, exhibiting comparable errors, although the accuracy of t...