A Case Study of an Arctic Mixed-Phase Cloud with Riming and Aggregation of Dendrites Using Zenith-Pointing and Scanning Ka-band Radars and Multi-Angle Snowflake Camera

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Description

We use observations from the Oliktok Point KAZR, Ka-SACR and Multi-Angle Snowflake Camera (MASC) to investigate microphysical processes in mixed-phase Arctic clouds. On 2nd April 2017, a precipitation event was observed where the precipitation formation mechanism changed from being dominated by vapor growth in the dendritic growth regime through rime growth to aggregation growth. The Ka-SACR ZDR decreases from around 5 dB during dendritic growth to 2-3 dB where riming dominates, and later to less than 1 dB when aggregation is the dominant process. We use image measurements from Multi-Angle Snowflake Camera to identify the dominant precipitation particle characteristics which are then used in a scattering model to evaluate our interpretation of the event. This work is the precursor to a modeling of same event.