Pressure and buoyancy fields derived from Doppler radar data in a tornadic thunderstorm.

Abstract

A method for retrieval of pressure and buoyancy distributions in deep convection is applied to Doppler radar data collected at two analysis times during the tornadic Del City (Oklahoma) thunderstorm of 20 May 1977. Changes of a previous version of the technique, necessitated by application to real data, include procedures for handling irregularly-bounded volumes and missing data and new assumptions to include reflectivity data and turbulent effects in the equations. In the tornadic stage the pressure field includes a pronounced minimum at low levels coincident with the mesocyclone. -from Authors