Monitoring of weather radar receivers using solar signals detected in operational scan data

When operating a network of weather radars for monitoring of (severe) precipitation and (strong) wind, data quality and network homogeneity are of crucial importance. Using sun for offline calibration of the antenna alignment is a well-established method and tools for this are included in the software packages provided by the radar manufacturers. This offline calibration is typically performed during radar maintenance. Solar signals can, however, be detected automatically in polar reflectivity data produced operationally by a weather radar.