Date of Award
2016
Document Type
Open Access Master's Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science in Applied Physics (MS)
Administrative Home Department
Department of Physics
Advisor 1
Alexander B Kostinski
Committee Member 1
Jacek I Borysow
Committee Member 2
William I Rose
Abstract
How well can a co-located lidar and radar retrieve a drop size distribution in drizzling clouds? To answer, we mimic scattering from a laboratory cloud to retrieve a lidar-radar effective diameter. Using only the shape parameter of the gamma-distributed drops, the mean diameter of the drops can be estimated from lidar-radar effective diameter to within a few percent of the true mean. In practice, the shape parameter of the gamma distribution is not known. To set bounds, mean diameters were calculated from the lidar-radar effective diameter using a range of in situ measured gamma shape parameters. The estimated means varied within 13% below to 18% above the true mean. To put this range of inherent uncertainty for lidar-radar retrievals in perspective, a decrease of 15-20% in drop size is argued to be sufficient to offset a doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations (e.g., Slingo 1990).
Recommended Citation
Shaw, Mary Amanda, "Testing Lidar-Radar Derived Drop Sizes Against In Situ Measurements", Open Access Master's Thesis, Michigan Technological University, 2016.
