Numerical solver for vertical air motion estimation

We present preliminary research on a method to estimate Vertical Air Motion (VAM) at a particular height by comparing the measured rain-rate (RR) by a vertically-pointing S-band Frequency-Modulated Continuous-Wave (FMCW) radar with that of a ground-based disdrometer. The method is based on a constrained parametric solver, assuming high correlation between 5-min averaged rain rates measured by the radar and disdrometer. The method is tested over disdrometer and radar observations during the Verification of the ORigins Tornado EXperiment in South East US (VORTEX-SE) project. Finally, the results are partially validated by means of fitting a gamma distribution to the VAM-corrected DSD profiles and studying its parameters.
This research is part of the projects PGC2018-094132-B-I00 and MDM2016-0600 (“CommSensLab” Excellence Unit) funded by Ministerio de Ciencia e Investigación (MCIN)/ Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI)/10.13039/501100011033/ FEDER “Una manera de hacer Europa”. The work of A. Salcedo-Bosch was supported under grant 2020 FISDU 00455 funded by Generalitat de Catalunya—AGAUR. The European Commission collaborated under projects H2020 ACTRIS-IMP (GA-871115) and H2020 ATMOACCESS (GA-101008004).
Peer Reviewed
Postprint (author's final draft)