Drop-Size Distribution Variability over Central Argentina during RELAMPAGO-CACTI

CASANOVAS, CANDELA; P. SALIO; GALLIGANI, VICTORIA SOL

Conferencia; RELAMPAGO-CACTI Data Analysis Workshop; 2019

Central Argentina denotes a mid-latitude climate regime characterized by the presence of strong deep convection and substantial complex terrain interactions. The meteorological and geographical scenario in this region provides unique environmental mechanisms for initiation, intensification and large-scale growth of severe storms. This motivated the recently deployed RELAMPAGO (Remote sensing of Electrification, Lightning, And Mesoscale/microscale Processes with Adaptive Ground Observations) and CACTI (Clouds, Aerosols, and Complex Terrain Interactions) field campaigns. This dual campaign was conducted between October 2018 and April 2019 in west central Argentina in the general vicinity of the Sierras de Córdoba (SDC) and the Andes foothills. Combined environmental and cloud/precipitation measurements during this dual campaign provided an unprecedented dataset in the region, including the deployment of three OTT-Parsivel2 and one 2D-video disdrometers analyzed in the present study. All the disdrometers analyzed are deployed in the province of Cordoba, across grasslands and mountainous areas, and spanning a broad range of precipitation regimes from light to extreme convective rain. In the present study, these novel Drop-size distribution (DSD) dataset are analyzed during the whole campaign period. Following the methodology in Dolan et al. 2018, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is considered to analyze the different parameters of the DSD distribution over the different sites. The parameters considered are derived after applying a thorough data quality control following Thompson et al. 2015 and assuming a normalized gamma size distribution. The DSD parameters analyzed include the median drop diameter (D0), the normalized intercept parameter (Nw), the rain rate (RR), the liquid water content (LWC), and the total number of drops (Nt). This sample is characterized under the mid-latitude group and the log10(Nw)-D0 and the LWC-D0 space is discussed.Future work will focus on exploiting radar data available in the vicinity of each of the disdrometers sites in order to determine the precipitation type and its microphysical properties (e.g., stratiform ? convective) by analyzing the observed weather radar reflectivity fields.