Detecting Weather Radar Clutter by Information Fusion With Satellite Images and Numerical Weather Prediction Model Output

A method for detecting clutter in weather radar images by information fusion is presented. Radar data, satellite images, and output from a numerical weather prediction model are combined and the radar echoes are classified using supervised classification. The presented method uses indirect information on precipitation in the atmosphere from Meteosat-8 multispectral images and near-surface temperature estimates from the DMIHIRLAM-S05 numerical weather prediction model. Alternatively, an operational now casting product called 'Precipitating Clouds' based on Meteosat-8 input is used. A scale-space ensemble method is used for classification and the clutter detection method is illustrated on a case of severe sea clutter contaminated radar data. Detection accuracies above 90 % are achieved and using an ensemble classification method the error rate is reduced by 40 %.