Principles and Applications of Dual - Polarization Weather Radar . Part III : Artifacts

With the new data collected with polarimetric radars comes a set of new data quality issues and artifacts. It is important for these artifacts to be recognized and understood as such, thereby allowing operational meteorologists to focus on the interpretation of the physically important observations. In this third part of the series, artifacts found in polarimetric radar data are described and explained. These include attenuation and differential attenuation, nonuniform beam filling, depolarization streaks, and three-body scattering signatures. Examples of each are given, along with explanations of what they mean, and how they may be used to provide some information about a storm and its microphysics.