ACINN Graduate Seminar - WS 2025/26

2025-12-10 at 17:00 (on-line and on-site) in the computer room

Multi-measurement perspectives on precipitating cloud microphysics

Julia Shates

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA

 

Ice and snow microphysics are variable across environmental conditions and storm systems. Ice particle size, number, mass, and shape have implications on remote sensing retrievals, which impact quantification of precipitation at the surface. They also have a demonstrated effect on weather forecast predictability of cold precipitation. Profiling radar observations can be used to identify cloud and precipitation regimes through the vertical structure including hydrometeor phase, cloud top heights, and convective or stratiform features. Cloud and precipitation processes such as aggregation, sublimation, and melting can be established from the shape and variability of radar profiles. In-situ observations within clouds and at the surface tie remote sensing observations to the hydrometeor microphysical properties. This presentation includes an investigation on ice cloud and precipitation characteristics and regimes using both in-situ and remote sensing observations of cold rain, snowfall and ice clouds from mid and high-latitude sites. The measurements across the sites include in-situ microphysical observations, and ground-based, space-based and aircraft-based radar observations. Analysis of snowfall regimes and their vertical structure are shown to be associated with different environmental conditions tied to synoptic scale forcing and temperature and moisture profiles. Ground-based radar observations reveal challenges in detecting near-surface snowfall and melting levels from spaceborne perspectives. In collocated aircraft observations of ice particles in convective environments, microphysical processes are considered for the context of retrieval development and modeling. Combining in-situ and remote sensing observations with forward modeling methods offer insights to unique cloud and precipitation regimes, which provide a powerful constraint in retrieval development and modeling cloud and precipitation microphysical processes.

 

The content of this webpage is the author’s opinion and the author’s intellectual property. ACINN has the author’s consent to make this information available on the webpage for the announcement of the seminar presentation and in the seminar archive.