Abstract:The radar VAD wind is restricted in data comprehensive operational application by without pressure information. To make up the disadvantage, this paper proposes a method to retrieve the pressure for VAD wind based on the surface meteorological information. The method introduces a polytrophic atmosphere into the pressure altitude formula, in which the surface information is obtained from the automatic surface weather observation at the radar station. The temperature lapse rate is the most important influence on the estimation accuracy. It is calculated in changing with height, month, and region by 2007 radiosonde data. Then four different temperature lapse rate sensitive experiments are undertaken respectively: (1) constant， (2) time changing， (3) height changing， and (4) both time and height changing. Meanwhile, the climate statistic experiment is also done. The results of experiments indicate that the way based on surface observation reduces the error obviously compared with the traditional climate statistic way. Especially the height time dependent temperature lapse rate is better than other kind of temperature lapse rate. The spatial applicability of the method is evaluated too. The result reveals that the method has high applicability in different areas over China.