Constraining mass-diameter relations from hydrometeor images and cloud radar reflectivities in tropical continental and oceanic convective anvils
Résumé
In this study the density of hydrometeors in tropical clouds is derived from a combined analysis of particle images from 2-D-array probes and associated reflectivities measured with a Doppler cloud radar on the same research aircraft. The mass-diameter m(D) relationship is expressed as a power law with two unknown coefficients (pre-factor, exponent) that need to be constrained from complementary information on hydrometeors, where absolute ice density measurement methods do not apply. Here, at first an extended theoretical study of numerous hydrometeor shapes simulated in 3-D and arbitrarily projected on a 2-D plane allowed to constrain the temporal evolution of the exponent of the mass-diameter relationship with that of the exponent of the surface-diameter relationship that is measured by the 2-D-array probes. The pre-factor is then constrained from theoretical simulations of the radar reflectivities matching the measured reflectivities along the aircraft trajectory. The study has been performed as part of the Megha-Tropiques satellite project, where two types of mesoscale convective systems (MCS) have been investigated: (i) above the African Continent and (ii) above the Indian Ocean. In general, both mass-diameter coefficients (pre-factor and exponent) decrease with decreasing temperature, the decrease is more pronounced for oceanic MCS. The condensed water contents (CWC) calculated from particle size distributions (PSD) and m(D) also decrease with altitude while the concentrations of the hydrometeors increase with altitude. The calculated values of CWC are largest for continental MCS.
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