First Observations of Tracking Clouds Using Scanning ARM Cloud Radars
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Tracking clouds using scanning cloud radars can help to document the temporal evolution of cloud properties well before large-drop formation (weather radar “first echo”). These measurements also complement cloud and precipitation tracking using geostationary satellites and weather radars. Here, two-dimensional (2D) along-wind range–height indicator observations of a population of shallow cumuli (with and without precipitation) from the 35-GHz scanning Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program (ARM) cloud radar (SACR) at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)–ARM Southern Great Plains (SGP) site are presented. Observations from the ARM SGP network of scanning precipitation radars are used to provide the larger-scale context of the cloud field and to highlight the advantages of the SACR to detect the numerous small nonprecipitating cloud elements. A new cloud identification and tracking algorithm (CITA) is developed to track cloud elements. In CITA, a cloud element is identified as a region having a contiguous set of pixels exceeding a preset reflectivity and size threshold. The high temporal resolution of the SACR 2D observations (30 s) allows for an area superposition criteria algorithm to match cloud elements at consecutive times. Following CITA, the temporal evolution of cloud-element properties (number, size, and maximum reflectivity) is presented. The vast majority of the designated elements during this cumulus event were short-lived nonprecipitating clouds having an apparent life cycle shorter than 15 min. The advantages and disadvantages of cloud tracking using an SACR are discussed.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".