U.S. Department of EnergyOffice of Scientific and Technical Information
Retrieval of warm precipitation microphysics
Abstract
Intrieri et al. (1993) and later O’Connor et al. (2005) proposed a technique to constrain water drop size distribution using lidar backscatter (related to water drop cross-section) and Doppler spectral width (related to the width of the water drop size distribution). This radar-lidar technique can be used to estimate precipitation rate and microphysical characteristics at all levels in the subcloud layer when collocated radar and ceilometer observations are available. We apply this technique to the vertically pointing ARM ceilometer lidar and Ka-band Zenith Radar (KAZR2) pair. The O’Connor et al. (2005) technique requires ceilometer backscatter to be calibrated and remapped to the radar spatio-temporal resolution (here 2 s x 30 m). Ceilometer backscatter is calibrated following a variation of the O'Connor et al. (2004) technique by scaling observed path-integrated backscatter in thick stratocumulus to match theoretical cloud lidar ratio values. Satisfactory conditions for ceilometer backscatter calibration are identified as the first (in time) 20-min periods each day with standard deviation of lidar ratio smaller than 1.5. The observed backscatter during the “satisfactory 20-min period” are input to Hogan (2006)’s multi scattered model to determine a daily backscatter calibration factor. For days where satisfactory conditions are not observed, a climatological calibration factormore »
- Authors:
- Publication Date:
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC05-00OR22725
- Research Org.:
- Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Archive; Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Data Center
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
- Collaborations:
- PNNL, BNL, ANL, ORNL
- Subject:
- 54 Environmental Sciences
- Keywords:
- precipitation; rainfall rate; atmospheric turbulence; cloud base height; cloud top height; liquid water path; atmospheric temperature; lidar; radar doppler; ceilometer
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1542906
- DOI:
- https://doi.org/10.5439/1542906
Citation Formats
Lamer, Katia. Retrieval of warm precipitation microphysics. United States: N. p., 2019.
Web. doi:10.5439/1542906.
Lamer, Katia. Retrieval of warm precipitation microphysics. United States. doi:https://doi.org/10.5439/1542906
Lamer, Katia. 2019.
"Retrieval of warm precipitation microphysics". United States. doi:https://doi.org/10.5439/1542906. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1542906. Pub date:Wed Jun 19 00:00:00 EDT 2019
@article{osti_1542906,
title = {Retrieval of warm precipitation microphysics},
author = {Lamer, Katia},
abstractNote = {Intrieri et al. (1993) and later O’Connor et al. (2005) proposed a technique to constrain water drop size distribution using lidar backscatter (related to water drop cross-section) and Doppler spectral width (related to the width of the water drop size distribution). This radar-lidar technique can be used to estimate precipitation rate and microphysical characteristics at all levels in the subcloud layer when collocated radar and ceilometer observations are available. We apply this technique to the vertically pointing ARM ceilometer lidar and Ka-band Zenith Radar (KAZR2) pair. The O’Connor et al. (2005) technique requires ceilometer backscatter to be calibrated and remapped to the radar spatio-temporal resolution (here 2 s x 30 m). Ceilometer backscatter is calibrated following a variation of the O'Connor et al. (2004) technique by scaling observed path-integrated backscatter in thick stratocumulus to match theoretical cloud lidar ratio values. Satisfactory conditions for ceilometer backscatter calibration are identified as the first (in time) 20-min periods each day with standard deviation of lidar ratio smaller than 1.5. The observed backscatter during the “satisfactory 20-min period” are input to Hogan (2006)’s multi scattered model to determine a daily backscatter calibration factor. For days where satisfactory conditions are not observed, a climatological calibration factor of 1.35 is used to calibrate the observed backscatter. Calibrated ceilometer backscatter is subsequently mapped on the KAZR2 time-height grid using a nearest-neighbor approach. Following Kollias et al. (2019), KAZR2 calibration is performed using collocated surface-based Parsivel laser disdrometer-equivalent radar reflectivity estimates during light precipitation events. This radar-lidar technique generates time-height maps of precipitation rate from 200 m above ground level to 90 m below cloud base height that are filtered for aerosol contamination.},
doi = {10.5439/1542906},
journal = {},
number = ,
volume = ,
place = {United States},
year = {2019},
month = {6}
}