Patent ID: 8098188

Claim:
A method of using a meteorological radar to characterize the convection intensity of a cloud, the reflectivity of said cloud determined by an electromagnetic wave being distributed in space, said method comprising: detecting a distribution of the reflectivity of the cloud with the meteorological radar; discretizing the distribution of the reflectivity according to a network of points (i, j, k) of the space in three dimensions; defining a profile ( 22 ) as a function ( 1 ) of a parameter ( 21 ), said parameter being a given numerical function in two dimensions (i, j) of the distribution of the reflectivity at each point of the network; and combining a number of the profiles ( 22 ) into an overall profile ( 24 ), said profiles ( 22 ) each being defined by a normalized function of numeric parameters associated with each of the said profiles ( 22 ), said normalized function varying uniformly between a minimum constant value and a maximum constant value, said normalized function being equal to the minimum value when the normalized parameter is less than a low threshold (threshold min) and being equal to the maximum value when the normalized parameter is greater than a high threshold (threshold max), the cloud being characterized as convective when the overall profile is equal to one of the maximum and minimum constant values and as stratiform when the overall profile is equal to the other of the maximum and minimum constant values.