Evaluation of CloudSat snowfall rate profiles by a comparison with in situ micro-rain radar observations in East Antarctica

Lemonnier, Florentin; Madeleine, Jean-Baptiste; Claud, Chantal; Genthon, Christophe; Durán-Alarcón, Claudio; Palerme, Cyril; Berne, Alexis; Souverijns, Niels; van Lipzig, Nicole; Gorodetskaya, Irina V.; L'Ecuyer, Tristan; Wood, Norman

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-13-943-2019

Articles | Volume 13, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-13-943-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-13-943-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 13, issue 3

Research article

| Highlight paper

|

19 Mar 2019

Research article | Highlight paper |

| 19 Mar 2019

Evaluation of CloudSat snowfall rate profiles by a comparison with in situ micro-rain radar observations in East Antarctica

Florentin Lemonnier, Jean-Baptiste Madeleine, Chantal Claud, Christophe Genthon, Claudio Durán-Alarcón, Cyril Palerme, Alexis Berne, Niels Souverijns, Nicole van Lipzig, Irina V. Gorodetskaya, Tristan L'Ecuyer, and Norman Wood

Data sets

Snowfall rate estimates derived from a micro rain radar (MRR) at the Dumont d'Urville station, Adelie Land, East Antarctica, link to netCDF file. Alexis Berne, Jacopo Grazioli, and Christophe Genthon https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.882565

Short summary

Evaluation of the vertical precipitation rate profiles of CloudSat radar by comparison with two surface-based micro-rain radars (MRR) located at two antarctic stations gives a near-perfect correlation between both datasets, even though climatic and geographic conditions are different for the stations. A better understanding and reassessment of CloudSat uncertainties ranging from −13 % up to +22 % confirms the robustness of the CloudSat retrievals of snowfall over Antarctica.