Identification

Title

Evaluation of physical microphysical property retrieval algorithms during the 2020 IMPACTS field campaign

Abstract

The NASA Investigation of Microphysics and Precipitation for Atlantic Coast-Threatening Snowstorms (IMPACTS) field campaign provides high-quality, high-altitude aircraft lidar (532 nm), radar (W band), and in-cloud microphysical aircraft data taken during wintertime storm events impacting the United States. This study evaluates two mass–dimensional relationships [Brown and Francis (BF95); Heymsfield (H14)] and two lidar–radar microphysical retrieval algorithms [ CloudSat and CALIPSO Ice Cloud Property Product (2C-ICE); VarPy (a variational method derived from the satellite lidar–radar data community)] to estimate aircraft-retrieved volume extinction coefficient ( σ ), ice water content (IWC), and effective radius ( r e ) during the 2020 IMPACTS deployment. BF95 and H14 have a close 1:1 correlation ( R 2 = 0.98) with in situ observations of σ . However, only BF95 displays a linear, consistent, and almost temperature-independent low bias for IWC and r e , which likely arises from the environmental conditions used to determine each. Unlike the field-campaign-derived BF95 and H14 relationships, VarPy and 2C-ICE directly ingest the aircraft-based lidar and radar data to simulate σ , IWC, and r e . For all three microphysical parameters, VarPy and 2C-ICE retrieval errors became notably more pronounced around the dendritic growth zone (from −15° to −10°C) and near freezing (≥−5°C), which suggests that both algorithms experience difficulty addressing riming and aggregation processes and with larger particles (dendrites and plates) due in part to their simplified ice particle assumptions. However, the mean-melt diameter ice-particle assumption did yield more accurate IWC estimates, which led to slightly better overall results for VarPy.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7028wz5

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

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Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2025-02-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

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name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

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

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact