An X-band radar in the heart of London
In March 2013, UK RainGain partners installed a portable X-band RS90 'Rainscanner' weather radar on the rooftop of a tall building in Central London. The installation was rather challenging and we nearly froze up there, but the view and the experience was definitely worth it!
The radar was lent to us by radar manufacturer Selex for a period of 6 months, so unfortunately we had to dismount it at the end of 2013. While it was operational we were lucky to capture a couple of good storms over Central London and we also used it to monitor rainfall and drizzle during the Wimbledon All-England Lawn Tennis Championship. We are currently processing the data we collected and will soon have some results to show!
This experiment not only allowed us to assess the added value of a low‑cost small X-band radar for urban hydrological applications, but it also enabled us to explore the feasibility and identify the challenges associated to the deployment and operation of an X-band radar in the heart of a dense urban area such as London (e.g. mitigation of radiation risk, filtering of dynamic clutter coming from multiple communication devices within the city, amongst others).
All in all, lots of lessons were learnt from this experiment which we will be sharing soon!
Susana Ochoa-Rodríguez
Imperial College London