Estimation of snow microphysical properties with application to millimeter-wavelength radar retrievals for snowfall rate
2011 Summer. Includes bibliographical references. The need for measuring snowfall is driven by the roles snow plays providing freshwater resources and affecting climate. Snow accumulations are an important resource for ecological and human needs and in many areas appear vulnerable to climate change....
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ftmountainschol:oai:mountainscholar.org:10217/48170 2023-06-11T04:09:49+02:00 Estimation of snow microphysical properties with application to millimeter-wavelength radar retrievals for snowfall rate Wood, Norman Bryce Stephens, Graeme L. Cotton, William R. Fassnacht, Steven R. Kummerow, Christian D. Matrosov, Sergey Y. 2007-01-03T05:34:49Z born digital doctoral dissertations application/pdf http://hdl.handle.net/10217/48170 English eng eng Colorado State University. Libraries 2000-2019 - CSU Theses and Dissertations Wood_colostate_0053A_10476.pdf http://hdl.handle.net/10217/48170 Copyright and other restrictions may apply. User is responsible for compliance with all applicable laws. For information about copyright law, please see https://libguides.colostate.edu/copyright. Text 2007 ftmountainschol 2023-04-29T17:46:26Z 2011 Summer. Includes bibliographical references. The need for measuring snowfall is driven by the roles snow plays providing freshwater resources and affecting climate. Snow accumulations are an important resource for ecological and human needs and in many areas appear vulnerable to climate change. Snow cover modifies surface heat fluxes over areas extensive enough to influence climate at regional and perhaps global scales. Seasonal runoff from snowmelt, along with over-ocean snowfall, contributes to freshening in the Arctic and high-latitude North Atlantic oceans. Yet much of the Earth's area for which snowfall plays such significant roles is not well-monitored by observations. Radar reflectivity at 94 GHz is sensitive to scattering by snow particles and CloudSat, in a near-polar orbit, provides vertically resolved measurements of 94 GHz reflectivity at latitudes from 82 N to 82 S. While not global in areal coverage, CloudSat does provide observations sampled from regions where snowfall is the dominant form of precipitation and an important component of hydrologic processes. The work presented in this study seeks to exploit these observations by developing and assessing a physically-base snowfall retrieval which uses an explicit representation of snow microphysical properties. As the reflectivity-based snowfall retrieval problem is significantly underconstrained, a priori information about snow microphysical properties is required. The approaches typically used to develop relations between reflectivity and snowfall rate, so-called Ze-S relations, require assumptions about particle properties such as mass, area, fallspeed, and shape. Limited information about the distributions of these properties makes difficult the characterization of how uncertainties in the properties influence uncertainties in the Ze-S relations. To address this, the study proceeded in two parts. In the first, probability distributions for snow particle microphysical properties were assessed using optimal estimation applied to ... Text Arctic Climate change North Atlantic Mountain Scholar (Digital Collections of Colorado and Wyoming) Arctic |
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Open Polar |
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Mountain Scholar (Digital Collections of Colorado and Wyoming) |
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ftmountainschol |
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English |
description |
2011 Summer. Includes bibliographical references. The need for measuring snowfall is driven by the roles snow plays providing freshwater resources and affecting climate. Snow accumulations are an important resource for ecological and human needs and in many areas appear vulnerable to climate change. Snow cover modifies surface heat fluxes over areas extensive enough to influence climate at regional and perhaps global scales. Seasonal runoff from snowmelt, along with over-ocean snowfall, contributes to freshening in the Arctic and high-latitude North Atlantic oceans. Yet much of the Earth's area for which snowfall plays such significant roles is not well-monitored by observations. Radar reflectivity at 94 GHz is sensitive to scattering by snow particles and CloudSat, in a near-polar orbit, provides vertically resolved measurements of 94 GHz reflectivity at latitudes from 82 N to 82 S. While not global in areal coverage, CloudSat does provide observations sampled from regions where snowfall is the dominant form of precipitation and an important component of hydrologic processes. The work presented in this study seeks to exploit these observations by developing and assessing a physically-base snowfall retrieval which uses an explicit representation of snow microphysical properties. As the reflectivity-based snowfall retrieval problem is significantly underconstrained, a priori information about snow microphysical properties is required. The approaches typically used to develop relations between reflectivity and snowfall rate, so-called Ze-S relations, require assumptions about particle properties such as mass, area, fallspeed, and shape. Limited information about the distributions of these properties makes difficult the characterization of how uncertainties in the properties influence uncertainties in the Ze-S relations. To address this, the study proceeded in two parts. In the first, probability distributions for snow particle microphysical properties were assessed using optimal estimation applied to ... |
author2 |
Stephens, Graeme L. Cotton, William R. Fassnacht, Steven R. Kummerow, Christian D. Matrosov, Sergey Y. |
format |
Text |
author |
Wood, Norman Bryce |
spellingShingle |
Wood, Norman Bryce Estimation of snow microphysical properties with application to millimeter-wavelength radar retrievals for snowfall rate |
author_facet |
Wood, Norman Bryce |
author_sort |
Wood, Norman Bryce |
title |
Estimation of snow microphysical properties with application to millimeter-wavelength radar retrievals for snowfall rate |
title_short |
Estimation of snow microphysical properties with application to millimeter-wavelength radar retrievals for snowfall rate |
title_full |
Estimation of snow microphysical properties with application to millimeter-wavelength radar retrievals for snowfall rate |
title_fullStr |
Estimation of snow microphysical properties with application to millimeter-wavelength radar retrievals for snowfall rate |
title_full_unstemmed |
Estimation of snow microphysical properties with application to millimeter-wavelength radar retrievals for snowfall rate |
title_sort |
estimation of snow microphysical properties with application to millimeter-wavelength radar retrievals for snowfall rate |
publisher |
Colorado State University. Libraries |
publishDate |
2007 |
url |
http://hdl.handle.net/10217/48170 |
geographic |
Arctic |
geographic_facet |
Arctic |
genre |
Arctic Climate change North Atlantic |
genre_facet |
Arctic Climate change North Atlantic |
op_relation |
2000-2019 - CSU Theses and Dissertations Wood_colostate_0053A_10476.pdf http://hdl.handle.net/10217/48170 |
op_rights |
Copyright and other restrictions may apply. User is responsible for compliance with all applicable laws. For information about copyright law, please see https://libguides.colostate.edu/copyright. |
_version_ |
1768383807884361728 |