ELectra DOppler RAdar (ELDORA)

ELDORA is an airborne, dual beam, meteorological research radar developed jointly by NCAR and France's Centre de Recherches en Physique de L'Environnement Terrestre et Planetaire (CRPE.) ELDORA's first deployment was to TOGA COARE in the Solomon Islands in January and February 1993.

ELDORA’s mobility allows observations of clouds, convective systems and storms over remote regions.

ELDORA mounts on a Lockheed P-3 aircraft, operated by the Naval Research Lab (NRL). Its two antennas extend back from the tail of the aircraft and spin about the longitudinal axis of the aircraft. One antenna 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 all of 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 3-dimensional structure of the atmosphere is produced which can then be sliced through any axis to produce two dimensional plots.