In an experimental set‐up in and around Helsinki, Finland (60°N, 25°E), we have detected pest insect immigration using weather radars and insect traps in the field. This study was part of a project to develop a system to give warning of a possible arrival of long‐range migrant insect pests. Bird‐cherry aphid, Rhopalosiphum padi, and diamondback moth, Plutella xylostella, were found on the ground following migrations in warm airstreams at the end of May 2007. This migration episode was successfully forecast by the meteorologists in the project team. For the summer 2008, we developed a pest insect immigration alarm system based on SILAM, a Finnish Meteorological Institute atmospheric dispersion model. The first important pest insect immigration occurred in late June, bringing bird‐cherry aphids. Our alarm system correctly produced a warning of this immigration. We studied the migration path in the observed events in 2007 and 2008 with the help of the atmospheric dispersion model. Weather radars frequently showed rain echo over the area, but there was also a lot of echoes originating from the migrating insects. Using the polarimetric weather radar in Helsinki, we could differentiate insects from other sources of echoes. Insects were common in layers below 1 km, and were observed up to height of about 2.5 km. Using Doppler weather radars we were able to observe the speed and direction of the migration. The experiment showed that an atmospheric dispersion model is an effective tool for predicting the movement of airborne migrants. The alarm system would work still better, if the sources of the immigrants were known in more detail. In addition, the very simple modelling of airborne migration should be refined. Weather radars, and especially polarimetric systems, are able to detect insect migrations and reveal details of the phenomenon not obtainable by other means.

Billions of organisms travel through the air, influencing population dynamics, community interactions, ecosystem services and our lives in many different ways. Yet monitoring these movements are technically very challenging. During the last few decades, radars have increasingly been used to study the aerial movements of birds, bats and insects, yet research efforts have often been local and uncoordinated between research groups. However, a network of operational weather radars is continuously recording atmospheric conditions all over Europe and these hold enormous potential for coordinated, continental-scale studies of the aerial movements of animals. The European Network for the Radar surveillance of Animal Movement (ENRAM) is a new e-COST research network aiming exactly at exploring this potential. The main objective of ENRAM is to merge expertise to utilize weather radars to monitor the aerial movement of animals across Europe for a broad range of stakeholders at an unprecedented scale and enable researchers to study the causes and consequences of movement. In this paper we describe the aims of ENRAM in more detail and the challenges researchers will address, provide an overview of aero-ecological studies using radar, and present some of the opportunities that a large sensor network can provide for movement ecology research.

The Finnish Meteorological Institute and Vaisala have established a mesoscale weather observational network in southern Finland. The Helsinki Testbed is an open research and quasi-operational program designed to provide new information on observing systems and strategies, mesoscale weather phenomena, urban and regional modeling, and end-user applications in a high-latitude (~60°N) coastal environment. The Helsinki Testbed and related programs feature several components: observing system design and implementation, small-scale data assimilation, nowcasting and short-range numerical weather prediction, public service, and commercial development of applications. Specifically, the observing instrumentation focuses on meteorological observations of meso-gamma-scale phenomena that are often too small to be detected adequately by traditional observing networks. In particular, more than 40 telecommunication masts (40 that are 120 m high and one that is 300 m high) are instrumented at multiple heights. Other instrumentation includes one operational radio sounding (and occasional supplemental ones), ceilometers, aerosol-particle and trace-gas instrumentation on an urban flux-measurement tower, a wind profiler, and four Doppler weather radars, three of which have dual-polarimetric capability. The Helsinki Testbed supports the development and testing of new observational instruments, systems, and methods during coordinated field experiments, such as the NASA Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM). Currently, the Helsinki Testbed Web site typically receives more than 450,000 weekly visits, and more than 600 users have registered to use historical data records. This article discusses the three different phases of development and associated activities of the Helsinki Testbed from network development and observational campaigns, development of the local analysis and prediction system, and testing of applications for commercial services. Finally, the Helsinki Testbed is evaluated based on previously published criteria, indicating both successes and shortcomings of this approach.

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When making radar-based precipitation products, a radar measurement is commonly taken to represent the geographical location vertically below the contributing volume of the measurement sample. However, when wind is present during the fall of the hydrometeors, precipitation will be displaced horizontally from the geographical location of the radar measurement. Horizontal advection will introduce discrepancies between the radar-measured and ground level precipitation fields. The significance of the adjustment depends on a variety of factors related to the characteristics of the observed precipitation as well as those of the desired end product. In this paper the authors present an advection adjustment scheme for radar precipitation observations using estimated hydrometeor trajectories obtained from the High-Resolution Limited-Area Model (HIRLAM) MB71 NWP model data. They use the method to correct the operational Finnish radar composite and evaluate the significance of precipitation advection in typical Finnish conditions. The results show that advection distances on the order of tens of kilometers are consistently observed near the edge of the composite at ranges of 100-250 km from the nearest radar, even when using a low elevation angle of 0.38. The Finnish wind climatology suggests that approximately 15% of single radar measurement areas are lost on average when estimating ground level rainfall if no advection adjustment is applied. For the Finnish composite, area reductions of approximately 10% have been observed, while the measuring area is extended downstream by a similar amount. Advection becomes increasingly important at all ranges in snowfall with maximum distances exceeding 100 km.