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Low-Level Wind Shear Characteristics and Lidar-Based Alerting at Lanzhou Zhongchuan International Airport, China

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Abstract

Lanzhou Zhongchuan International Airport [International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) code ZLLL] is located in a wind shear prone area in China, where most low-level wind shear events occur in dry weather conditions. We analyzed temporal distribution and synoptic circulation background for 18 dry wind shear events reported by pilots at ZLLL by using the NCEP final (FNL) operational global analysis data, and then proposed a lidar-based regional divergence algorithm (RDA) to determine wind shear intensity and location. Low-level wind shear at ZLLL usually occurs in the afternoon and evening in dry conditions. Most wind shear events occur in an unstable atmosphere over ZLLL, with changes in wind speed or direction generally found at 700 hPa and 10-m height. Based on synoptic circulations at 700 hPa, wind shear events could be classified as strong northerly, convergence, southerly, and weak wind types. The proposed RDA successfully identified low-level wind shear except one southerly case, achieving 94% alerting rate compared with 82% for the operational system at ZLLL and 88% for the ramp detection algorithm (widely used in some operational alert systems) based on the same dataset. The RDA-unidentified southerly case occurred in a near neutral atmosphere, and wind speed change could not be captured by the Doppler lidar.

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Acknowledgments

The lidar data used in this work were provided by Gansu Sub-Bureau of Northwest Air Traffic Management Bureau of Civil Aviation of China. The NCEP FNL data were downloaded from https://rda.ucar.edu/datasets/ds083.2.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory for Semi-Arid Climate Change of the Ministry of Education, College of Atmospheric Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Lanqian Li & Aimei Shao

  2. Gansu Sub-Bureau of Northwest Air Traffic Management Bureau of Civil Aviation of China, Lanzhou, 730087, China

    Kaijun Zhang & Nan Ding

  3. Hong Kong Observatory, Kowloon, Hong Kong, 999077, China

    Pak-Wai Chan

Authors
  1. Lanqian Li
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  2. Aimei Shao
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  3. Kaijun Zhang
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  4. Nan Ding
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  5. Pak-Wai Chan
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Aimei Shao.

Additional information

Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41275102), Science and Technology Project of the Northwest Air Traffic Management Bureau of Civil Aviation of China in 2017, and Special Fund for National Science and Technology Basic Research Program of China (2017FY100900).

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Li, L., Shao, A., Zhang, K. et al. Low-Level Wind Shear Characteristics and Lidar-Based Alerting at Lanzhou Zhongchuan International Airport, China. J Meteorol Res 34, 633–645 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13351-020-9134-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13351-020-9134-6

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