Abstract
Abstract. The Differential Emissivity Imaging Disdrometer (DEID) is a new evaporation-based optical and thermal instrument designed to measure the mass, size, density and type of individual hydrometeors as well as their bulk properties. Hydrometeor spatial dimensions are measured on a heated metal plate using an infrared camera by exploiting the much higher thermal emissivity of water compared with metal. As a melted hydrometeor evaporates, its mass can be directly related to the loss of heat from the hotplate assuming energy conservation across the hydrometeor. The heat loss required to evaporate a hydrometeor is found to be independent of environmental conditions including ambient wind velocity, moisture level and temperature. The difference in heat loss for snow vs. rain for a given mass offers a method for discriminating precipitation phase. The DEID measures hydrometeors at sampling frequencies of up to 1 Hz with masses and effective diameters greater than 1 µg and 200 µm, respectively, determined by the size of the hotplate and the thermal camera specifications. Measurable snow water equivalent (SWE) precipitation rates range from 0.001 to 200 mm h−1, as validated against a standard weighing bucket. Preliminary field experiment measurements of snow and rain from the winters of 2019 and 2020 provided continuous automated measurements of precipitation rate, snow density and visibility. Measured hydrometeor size distributions agree well with canonical results described in the literature.
Highlights
Accurate measurements of the mass, density, shape, size and precipitation rate of hydrometeors are critical for scientific, industrial and commercial applications as well as weather prediction
Other instruments used for quantifying precipitation rate, fall speed, size distribution and visibility include the hotplate precipitation gauge (Rasmussen et al, 2011), the Multi-Angle Snowflake Camera (Garrett et al, 2012; Notaroš et al, 2016; Fitch et al, 2021), 2DVD (Kruger and Krajewski, 2002; Randeu et al, 2013) and the PARSIVEL (Battaglia et al, 2010; Friedrich et al, 2013; Loeb et al, 2021)
Ten 0.02 g, 20 μL water droplets were applied to the Differential Emissivity Imaging Disdrometer (DEID) heated plate using a pipette, and the mass of each was determined using Eq (4)
Summary
Accurate measurements of the mass, density, shape, size and precipitation rate of hydrometeors are critical for scientific, industrial and commercial applications as well as weather prediction. Other instruments used for quantifying precipitation rate, fall speed, size distribution and visibility include the hotplate precipitation gauge (Rasmussen et al, 2011), the Multi-Angle Snowflake Camera (Garrett et al, 2012; Notaroš et al, 2016; Fitch et al, 2021), 2DVD (Kruger and Krajewski, 2002; Randeu et al, 2013) and the PARSIVEL (Battaglia et al, 2010; Friedrich et al, 2013; Loeb et al, 2021) None of these instruments measure the mass and density of individual hydrometeors, which
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