Evaluation of 3D wind observations inferred from the analysis of airborne and ground‐based radars during HyMeX SOP‐1

Radial velocity measurements collected by the airborne radar RASTA during Hydrological Cycle in the Mediterranean Experiment ( HyMeX) S pecial Observation Period ( SOP) 1 are used to assess the quality of real‐time multiple‐Doppler winds produced in southern France from six ground‐based radars of the French operational radar network ARAMIS . An original verification procedure based upon the exploitation of RASTA radial velocities is proposed and applied to 10 h of data collected during HyMeX I ntensive Observing Periods ( IOPs) 6, 8 and 15. The statistical evaluation of multiple‐Doppler winds produced in a variety of weather situations shows that errors in ARAMIS ‐derived horizontal wind components are generally comprised between 0.5 and 2 m s −1 through most of the troposphere. Secondly, multiple‐Doppler winds are used to evaluate the performance of three‐dimensional (3 D) wind retrieval inferred from the analysis of RASTA radial velocities collected during HyMeX IOP 8. The mean difference between the two datasets is close to zero for all three wind components suggesting that errors on multiple‐Doppler and RASTA ‐derived 3D cloud winds should be very similar.