Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 1. Map of the French operational radar network ARAMIS. The 100 km (50 km for X-
band) ranges of measurement associated with each radar are shown by circles. Green,
purple and yellow colors correspond to C-, S-, and X-band radars, respectively.
In France, the ability to measure Doppler velocities at long range allows for a significant
dual- and multiple-Doppler coverage over a large part of the country. The resulting
coverage is quite heterogeneous due to the principle of ground-based radar measurements
and is slightly superior in southern France due to the higher network density in this region.
Between a height of 2 and 10 km (Fig. 2a) ~ 90% of the country is covered by at least 2 radar
systems. Multiple-Doppler coverage (3 radars or more) is maximized between 2.5 and 9 km
altitude, where ~80% of the French territory being covered by at least 3 radars. The radar
overlapping near the surface is however quite limited due to both extensive radar baselines
and beam blocking by terrain. The detailed maps of radar coverage at 2.5 and 5 km are
shown in Fig. 2b-c.
