Mean Vertical Motions Seen by Radar Wind Profilers

Abstract Radar wind profilers have been used to measure directly the vertical motion above the radar site. Mean values of vertical motions in the troposphere and lower stratosphere reported at sites in and near mountains are often several centimeters per second and have often been attributed to the effects of quasi-stationary lee waves. However, observations now available at sites in the plains, far from any mountains, also show mean values of several centimeters per second. For example, monthly mean values seen by the Flatland VHF radar near Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, range from about −3 to −7 cm s−1, with largest magnitudes during the winter. The authors examine several of the hypotheses that have previously been advanced to explain these observations and find that each is inconsistent with the observations in some respect, except that quasi-horizontal flow along gently sloping isentropic surfaces leads to mean downward motion as large as 1–2 cm s−1. In this paper the authors suggest that the effects o...