Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons^™

Explorations Into Machine Learning Techniques For Precipitation Nowcasting, Aditya Nagarajan

Masters Theses

Recent advances in cloud-based big-data technologies now makes data driven solutions feasible for increasing numbers of scientific computing applications. One such data driven solution approach is machine learning where patterns in large data sets are brought to the surface by finding complex mathematical relationships within the data. Nowcasting or short-term prediction of rainfall in a given region is an important problem in meteorology. In this thesis we explore the nowcasting problem through a data driven approach by formulating it as a machine learning problem.

State-of-the-art nowcasting systems today are based on numerical models which describe the physical processes leading to …

X-Band Dual Polarization Phased-Array Radar For Meteorological Applications, Krzysztof Orzel

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation details the development and operation of a novel dual-polarized Phase-Tilt Weather Radar (PTWR) designed for meteorological applications. The use of radar has a well-documented history in detection and classification of weather phenomena, but due to the limited mechanical scanning speed, its usage for severe weather observations remains far from ideal. The PTWR utilizes phased-array technology and provides unique capabilities such as smart scanning, fast scan update, and tracking. This technology is considered a candidate for a replacement and consolidation of the current US weather and surveillance radar networks. The dissertation can be divided into three parts. First, the …

Implementation Of Dual-Polarization On An Airborne Scatterometer And Preliminary Data Quality, Jason Dvorsky

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

The Imaging Wind and RAin Profiler (IWRAP) is an airborne scatterometer system built and operated by University of Massachusetts Amherst's Microwave Remote Sensing Laboratory (MIRSL). The radar is seasonally deployed aboard one of the two National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) WP-3D Orion ``Hurricane Hunter'' aircraft based out of MacDill AFB in Tampa, Florida. IWRAP is a dual-frequency, Ku- and C-band, scatterometer that uses two conically scanning antennas to estimate the ocean surface wind vectors as well as intervening rain profiles. Data that is gathered with IWRAP is used to improve current Geophysical Model Functions (GMF) or to help derive …

Development, Deployment, And Characterization Of A Ku-Band Interferometer, Anthony Swochak

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Space-borne radar interferometry provides a global vantage point to understand climate change, global weather phenomenon, and other Earth dynamics. For climate change observations, space-borne interferometers can be utilized to relate ocean topography to temperature, thus providing a global map of ocean temperatures. Since the oceans are in constant motion, a single-pass interferometer is needed to successfully make these measurements of ocean height. The feasibility of a single-pass measurement is dependent on the physical size of the instrument, hence it is cheaper and more practical to launch a small, light weight instrument into space. Since instrument size scales inversely with operating …