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Observation of downburst wind characteristics using the Doppler profiler and near-ground measurements

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Abstract

A downburst is a strong downdraft that causes radiating, catastrophic winds at or near the ground. Relevant research conducted in the past decades shows that downbursts not only bring damage to the built environment but also have surprisingly destructive effects on aircraft and other flying objects. However, due to the complexity of atmospheric phenomena and limited measurement datasets, many uncertainties remain to be clarified in the understanding and modelling of the downburst wind field. To further explore the evolution characteristics of thunderstorms, this study uses data recorded during thunderstorms by a Doppler profiler of the Hong Kong Observatory and a near-ground anemometer installed at the Hong Kong International Airport to conduct a detailed feature analysis of the vertical profile and turbulence characteristics of downbursts within the atmospheric boundary layer. Based on long-term field measurements during thunderstorm events, the occurrence of a thunderstorm should be determined by a combination of simultaneous variations in multiple meteorological factors, including wind speed and direction, vertical wind speed, and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). During thunderstorms, extreme wind speeds occurred in the lower atmosphere and the height of the local peaks seems to be stable in the thunderstorm wind profiles. In addition, both methods, which consider a constant mean component (stationary) and a slowly varying mean component (non-stationary), are used to decompose the measured wind speed and are then compared to investigate the turbulence characteristics of downbursts. Although the gust factor and turbulence intensity show some deviation due to the influence of atmospheric stratification instability, this effect does not appear to be reflected in the turbulence integral scale.

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Data Availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from Hong Kong Observatory but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. Data are however available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of Hong Kong Observatory. In addition, the raw data involved in this study has been stored on an online platform (https://pan.baidu.com/).

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Funding

This study is funded by three projects from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51925802, 52178465 and 52208471) and supported by the 111 Project (Grant No. D21021), Municipal Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangzhou (Grant No. 20212200004).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Center for Wind Engineering and Engineering Vibration, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou, China

    Yinghou He, Jiahan Cai, Renjie Wang & Jiyang Fu

  2. Beijing Research Institute of Telemetry, Beijing, China

    Xiaojing He

  3. Hong Kong Observatory, Hong Kong, China

    Pakwai Chan

Authors
  1. Yinghou He
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  2. Jiahan Cai
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  3. Renjie Wang
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  4. Xiaojing He
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  5. Pakwai Chan
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  6. Jiyang Fu
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Contributions

All authors have read and agreed to the current version of the manuscript. YH: conceptualization, writing—original draft, methodology; JC: writing—original draft, resources; RW: investigation, validation; XH: data curation, investigation; PC: data curation; JF: conceptualization, writing—review and editing, funding acquisition.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jiyang Fu.

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The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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Not applicable—this study not involving humans or animals.

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Not applicable—this study not involving humans.

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He, Y., Cai, J., Wang, R. et al. Observation of downburst wind characteristics using the Doppler profiler and near-ground measurements. Nat Hazards 120, 4829–4851 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-024-06410-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-024-06410-w

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