Andrew Russell
Chilbolton Radar Video
Chilbolton Radar, Cumulus Clouds and Weather BalloonsThis short video shows the Chilbolton radar taking measurements of the development of some clouds during the Convective Stoem Initiation Project (CSIP) in 2005. The footage is sped up quite a lot. The dish, which is about 25m across, performs two types of scans: one where it nods up and down, this is to get data on the vertical development of thermals and clouds at different angles; and the second type of scan is where it goes round in a circle, this is to observe what is happening at a single level over the full range of the radar. During the video, you'll also see some clouds developing and a few weather balloons being released in the bottom left hand corner of the picture.
The picture below shows an example of some data from the radar. It shows a developing cloud, a cloud which eventually became a big storm. The data shows how much of the beam is being reflected back from the atmosphere, so where the cloud is most dense more of the beam is reflected.
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