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It’s true. Weather radar images show where radar beams have been “reflected” as they sweep the atmosphere. They’re useful for showing weather conditions because the beams are reflected by precipitation and the water vapor in clouds, but they can also be reflected by swarming masses of birds or insects.
Sep 24, 2014 · Weather radar can tell you whether to pack an umbrella and poncho for the day, but, to ornithologists and others in the know, it also reveals the tell-tale signatures of migrating birds.
- Simple Basics of Radar
- Reflectivity – Magnitude, Position, and Extent of Bird Movements
- Velocity – Direction and Speed of Bird Movements
- Caveats
- Numbers!
- Watch Animation of NEXRAD Radar
- Additional Information
A WSR-88D unit (hereafter radar) emits a pulse of electromagnetic radiation; the antenna emitting and receiving this pulse is stationed at one of several angles of elevation above the ground, so the energy gradually travels higher and higher above the surface of the earth under typical conditions as it moves away from the radar. This is important, ...
Birds lift off for nocturnal migration usually about 30-45 minutes after sunset. They typically ascend to flight altitudes 1000-3000m above the ground (smaller bodied species are typically in the lower portion of this region below 1000m, larger bodied birds higher up to 3000m or above). During this ascent and during migratory flight, birds interact...
Interpreting velocity imagery from radar is a critical component of radar ornithology. Using the velocity image, one can compare speeds of targets to speeds of the prevailing winds. Whenever targets are moving across the wind or against the wind, or moving more than 10-15 knots faster than the wind, those targets are almost exclusively birds. Exami...
Birds are not the only targets that radar detects. Precipitation appears as blocky, unevenly distributed patterns, very different from birds. But other biological targets like bats and insects appear in the same stippling pattern as birds, which makes distinguishing birds from bats, insects, and other aerial plankton challenging. Our next radar pie...
Radar provides us an opportunity to quantify bird migration. By correlating radar reflectivity data and direct visual studies of nocturnal migrants passing across the disk of the full moon, Dr. Sid Gauthreaux and Carroll Belser developed a calibration curve for interpreting radar reflectivity (measured in dBZ) in terms of birds km-3. See more here....
To help visualize and better understand how you can use radar to examine migration, we posted an animation and discussion of a flight on 8 – 9 May 2009 here. Watching this animation will allow you to see differences between precipitation and migrating birds.
An excellent primer for radar ornithology is the Clemson University Radar Ornithology Laboratory website. All of the concepts described above can be found in much greater detail on that site.
People also ask
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BirdCast applies weather surveillance radar to gather information on the numbers, flight directions, speeds and altitudes of birds aloft in order to expand the understanding of migratory bird movement. In this article, we’ll give you a brief overview and a behind-the-scenes look at the ways we apply radar data to study bird migration.
However, the range of this effect is <200 ft, so a weather radar can't be relied on to prevent bird strikes. It's also not well-studied and not verified across a wide range of species. The beam might also completely miss the birds due to scanning. So it's not a reliable bird deterrent.
Apr 21, 2022 · Within 20 minutes of lighting up, up to 16,000 birds crammed themselves into a half-kilometer radius. But when the lights flicked off, the dense clouds of birds on the radar screen dissipated just as fast, a finding later confirmed by on-site thermal cameras.
The New Migration Science. Fall migration will bring 4 billion birds into the skies over the United States. That’s not a guess—it’s hard data, gleaned from the first-ever national bird count using weather radar. Cornell Lab of Ornithology scientists analyzed data from 143 weather radar stations from 2013 to 2017 to provide the first large ...
