[MAPR Concept]MAPR (Multiple Antenna Profiler Radar) is an advanced wind profiler radar being developed at NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research) /EOL (Earth Observing Laboratory - formerly ATD) to make rapid wind measurements of the boundary layer. The radar was originally based on a Radian (now Vaisala) LAP 3000 915 MHz wind profiler, however has been highly modified. The antenna is divided into 4 vertically pointing sub-arrays for reception and uses Spaced Antenna techniques to measure wind. As the atmosphere moves over the radar, the motion of the atmospheric echoes is tracked over the receivers to make a wind measurement. A measurement can be made on time scales of 30 seconds to 5 minutes, which is considerably faster than the 10-15 minutes required by traditional DBS wind profilers. MAPR is generally deployed as part of an ISS (Integrated Sounding System). MAPR can also be run in multiple frequency mode to make FDI RIM (Frequency Domain Interferometry Range IMaging) fine range resolution measurements.

MAPR is currently deployed at the ISPA-2007 Project at Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Plots are available on the Realtime Plots page.

Recent Deployments :

More Links:

MAPR development is supported by NCAR/ATD. Support also comes from the Department of Energy VTMX program. Previous support has come from ARM and Radian.

Refs

Cohn, S.A., C.L. Holloway, S.P. Oncley, R.J. Doviak and R.J. Lataitis, "Validation of a UHF spaced antenna wind profiler for high resolution boundary layer observations", Radio Sci, 32, 1279 - 1296, 1997.
Cohn, S.A., W.O.J. Brown, C.L. Martin, M.E. Susedik, G. Maclean, and D.B. Parsons, "Clear Air Boundary Layer Spaced Antenna Wind Measurement with the Multiple Antenna Profiler (MAPR)", Annales Geophysicae, 19(8), 845 - 854, 2001.

CONTACTS

Science:
Bill Brown, Email: wbrown at ucar.edu
Steve Cohn, Email: cohn at ucar.edu

FDI RIM:
Tian-You Yu, Email: tyu at ou.edu

Engineering:
Mike Susedik, Email: susedik at ucar.edu

Software:
Charlie Martin, Email: martinc at ucar.edu
Gary Granger, Email: granger at ucar.edu


ISS / RTF / ATD / NCAR

Last Modified: