School of Meteorology Professor Guifu Zhang Publishes Book

Here’s a description from Dr. Zhang’s website (Found Here) about the book:

“Radar has been proven to be an indispensible tool for weather studies that have been well-documented. Radar reflectivity and Doppler measurements have demonstrated their value in weather observation, quantification and forecasting. Now, we have another set of measurements we can use to better study weather: weather radar polarimetry. After decades of research and development, weather radar polarimetry has now matured to the point that the national NEXRAD (WSR-88D) network has been upgraded with dual-polarization capability. Furthermore, other national weather radar networks have radars capable of producing multi-parameter polarimetric radar data (PRD). My understanding of weather radar polarimetry is as follows:

There is polarimetry in radar innovation,
which makes weather observations more accurate.
It brought excitement with its hydrometeor classification,
and improvement in quantitative precipitation estimation.
Multi-parameter measurements contain rich information,
which leads to deep understanding of cloud physics.
It helps model initialization and parameterization,
with great potential and future in weather prediction!

While the technology of radar polarimetry has matured, and PRD are available nationally and world-wide, radar polarimetry is still in its initial stages for operational usage. There is a lot of room for research and development, especially in using PRD for weather forecasts. It is important to know the principles of radar polarimetry and of PRD estimation and improvement, as well as the error characterization, information content, and error covariance of PRD. There is a growing need for a textbook that meteorology students, scholars and scientists can use to obtain this knowledge. Based on the weather radar polarimetry classes taught by the author at the University of Oklahoma, this book is written to provide readers with the fundamentals and tools to effectively and optimally use the available PRD.”

A link to purchase the book can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Weather-Radar-Polarimetry-Guifu-Zhang/dp/1439869588

Watch a video feature about the book here: https://youtu.be/Cw2fxH872Q4

Guifu Zhang is a Professor in the School of Meteorology. He has a Bachelor’s of Science in physics from Anhui University, located in Hefei, China. He has a Master’s of Science in radio physics from Wuhan University, located in Wuhan, China, and a Ph.D in electrical engineering from the University of Washington.