Radar processing techniques to study summer snowfall in the Sør Rondane Mountains, Antarctica ...

Snowfall is one of the main positive contributors to the surface mass balance of the Antarctic ice sheet. There are several techniques to monitor solid precipitation on the continent. Among them, meteorological radars provide the means to characterize the phenomenon on a local scale, with an unparal...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Ferrone, Alfonso
Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
Language:English
Published: Lausanne, EPFL 2022
Subjects:
Online Access:https://dx.doi.org/10.5075/epfl-thesis-9593
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/187214
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Summary:Snowfall is one of the main positive contributors to the surface mass balance of the Antarctic ice sheet. There are several techniques to monitor solid precipitation on the continent. Among them, meteorological radars provide the means to characterize the phenomenon on a local scale, with an unparalleled view of the processes in the lower levels of the atmosphere. However, due to the harsh weather and the logistic difficulties associated with their deployment in Antarctica, their usage is often limited to the immediate surroundings of the few scientific bases scattered on the continent. In this thesis, meteorological radar observations are used to investigate the effect of complex orography on precipitation in the vicinity of the Belgian research base Princess Elisabeth Antarctica (PEA). Two algorithms for the processing and calibration of the radar measurements collected had to be developed and evaluated. One of them has been applied to the data from three K-band Doppler profilers (MRR-PRO), deployed in a ...