Ewan James O'Connor — University of Reading
Walter A. Petersen — NASA Marshall Space Flight Center
V. Chandrasekar — Colorado State University
Dmitri N Moisseev — University of Helsinki
Annakaisa Marjaana von Lerber — Finnish Meteorological Institute
Matti Leskinen — University of Helsinki
Category
Ice Physical and Radiative Properties
Description
The measurement setup during AMF2 deployment.
The snowfall measurement experiment (BAECC SNEX) is a part of a joint campaign ‘Biogenic Aerosols – Effects on Clouds and Climate (BAECC)’ between DOE ARM, University of Helsinki, FMI and many other international collaborators. As a part of this campaign, US Department of Energy second ARM Mobile Facility (AMF2) is deployed in Hyytiälä, Southern Finland from Feb 1 through Sept 12, 2014. During this deployment, an intensive observation period from Feb 1 – Apr 30, 2014 is dedicated to documenting snowfall (cold precipitation) microphysics through a combination of multi-frequency (C, X, Ka, W -band) radar, microwave radiometer and lidar measurements supplemented by a comprehensive suit of surface-based precipitation observations. Multi-instrumental remote sensing and ground-based observations are used to give a detailed view of snow growth processes, i. e. condensation growth of ice crystals, snowflake growth by aggregation and riming.
The surface-based precipitation measurement suit consists of two 2D-video disdrometers, two OTT Parsivel video disdrometers, laser snow depth sensor, three precipitation weighing gauges, NASA Particle Imaging Package (second generation of the snow video imager), Vasiala PWD22 and a total precipitation sensor (Hotplate). To facilitate accurate surface measurements of snowfall properties a double fence inter-comparison reference wind protection for the weighing precipitation gauge, optical disdrometer (OTT Parsivel) and 2D-video disdrometer was built on site. Due to the duplication of some of instruments, namely disdrometers and weighing gauges, the data set can be also used to characterize their measurement errors as a function of wind speed. The wind measurements are done at the instrument heights inside and outside of the fence and at 10 m height.
The overall goal of the experiment is to characterize cold precipitation microphysics, improve radar based precipitation estimation in snowfall.
