The Early Years of Doppler Radar in Meteorology

Abstract

Radar echoes from moving targets are shifted in frequency from those of stationary targets by the familiar Doppler effect. Although radars designed to exploit this effect had been in use for many years, the first systematic observations of weather echoes with Doppler radar were not carried out until the mid-1950s. By then radar had already proven to be essential for cloud physics research and for many applications, such as short-term forecasting and aircraft storm avoidance. Researchers were quick to recognize that the new information contained in the Doppler shift provided a substantial increase in the potential usefulness of radar in meteorology.