Identification

Title

Snowflake size spectra retrieved from a UHF vertical profiler

Abstract

This paper develops a technique for retrieving snowflake size distributions (SSDs) from a vertically pointing 915-MHz vertical profiler. Drop size distributions (DSDs) have been retrieved from 915-MHz profilers for several years using least squares minimization to determine the best-fit DSD to the observed Doppler spectra. This same premise is used to attempt the retrieval of SSDs. A nonlinear search, the Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) method, is used to search the physically realistic solution space and arrive at a best-fit SSD from the Doppler spectra of the profiler. The best fit is assumed to be the minimum of the squared difference of the log of the observed and modeled spectrum power over the precipitation portion of the spectrum. A snowflake video imager (SVI) disdrometer was collocated with the profiler and provided surface estimates of the SSDs. The SVI also provided estimates of crystal type, which is critical in attempting to estimate the density-size relationship. A method to vary the density-size relationship during the event was developed as well. This was necessary to correctly scale the SVI SSDs for comparison to the profiler-estimated distributions. Five events were examined for this study, and good overall agreement was found between the profiler and SVI for the lowest profiler gate (225 m AGL). Vertical profiles of SSDs were also produced and appear to be physically reasonable. Uncertainty estimates using simulated Doppler spectra show that the retrieval uncertainties are larger than that for rainfall and can approach and exceed 100% for situations with large spectral broadening as a result of atmospheric turbulence. The larger uncertainties are attributed to the lack of unique Doppler spectra for quite different SSDs, resulting in a less well-behaved solution space than that of rainfall retrievals.

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document

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http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7qn6834

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Dataset language

eng

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geoscientificInformation

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publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

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publication

effective date

2009-02-01T00:00:00Z

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Copyright 2009 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law (17 USC, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the Society's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statements, requires written permission or license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policies, available from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or amspubs@ametsoc.org. Permission to place a copy of this work on this server has been provided by the AMS. The AMS does not guarantee that the copy provided here is an accurate copy of the published work.

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OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

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pointOfContact

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