Date of Award

2020

Document Type

Open Access Master's Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Geology (MS)

Administrative Home Department

Department of Geological and Mining Engineering and Sciences

Advisor 1

Simon Carn

Advisor 2

Claudia Pasquero

Committee Member 1

Luke Bowman

Abstract

The present study analyzes four winter seasons of data from 2014 to 2017 collected from the National Weather Service in Marquette, Michigan. The two main instruments installed are the MRR, which provides a vertical reflectivity profile from ground level to 3 km, and the PIP, a horizontal camera pointing towards a light source, which measures the physical characteristics of each particle. The observations show that LES events are shallow, with heights of up to 1500 m, meanwhile synoptic events are deep, with vertical profile of 3000 m or beyond. The shallow events have bigger and low-density particles and synoptic events have smaller and high-density particles. Moreover, LES events are linked with low temperature and high-pressure mid-latitude cyclones, with winds from NW, meanwhile deep events have winds from SW. An automated algorithm has been written to recognize these two events.

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Geology Commons

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