Abstract
Abstract. The melting layer designates the transition region from solid to liquid precipitation, and is a typical feature of the vertical structure of stratiform precipitation. As it is characterised by a well-known signature in polarimetric radar variables, it can be identified by automatic detection algorithms. Though often assumed to be uniform in space and time for applications such as vertical profile correction, the spatial variability of the melting layer remains poorly documented. This work aims to characterise and quantify the spatial and temporal variability of the melting layer using a method based on the Fourier transform, which is applied to high-resolution X-band polarimetric radar data from two measurement campaigns in Switzerland. It is first demonstrated that the proposed method can accurately and concisely describe the spatial variability of the melting layer and may therefore be used as a tool for comparison. The method is then used to characterise the melting layer variability in summer precipitation on the relatively flat Swiss Plateau and in winter precipitation in a large inner Alpine valley (the Rhone valley in the Swiss Alps). Results indicate a higher contribution of smaller spatial scales to the total melting layer variability in the case of the Alpine environment. The same method is also applied to data from vertical scans in order to study the temporal variability of the melting layer. The variability in space and time is then compared to investigate the spatio-temporal coherence of the melting layer variability in the two study areas, which was found to be more consistent with the assumption of pure advection for the case of the plateau.
Highlights
Quantitative precipitation estimation (QPE) with radar in complex terrain such as the Alps is complicated by many factors amongst which are the partial and total beam shielding by terrain, the influence of orography on the dynamics and microphysics of precipitation as well as the shallow depth of precipitation during cold seasons (Germann and Joss, 2004; Roe, 2005; Houze, 2012; Colle et al, 2013)
While for Payerne a clear dominance could be observed at the 20–15 km scale, for the Valais data, the 10–5 km scale was almost as important as the 20–15 km scale (Fig. 13). Though these results indicate a higher importance of the smaller scale topography along the transect of the range–height indicator (RHI) in the Valais, it is difficult to link these to the melting layer variability due to the many other factors that may play a role
This study presented the characterisation and quantification of the spatial variability of the melting layer at different scales using a method based on the Fourier transform
Summary
Quantitative precipitation estimation (QPE) with radar in complex terrain such as the Alps is complicated by many factors amongst which are the partial and total beam shielding by terrain, the influence of orography on the dynamics and microphysics of precipitation as well as the shallow depth of precipitation during cold seasons (Germann and Joss, 2004; Roe, 2005; Houze, 2012; Colle et al, 2013). The measurements made aloft are usually extrapolated to the ground level to compensate for the lack of direct visibility with the radar (Joss and Pittini, 1991; Joss and Lee, 1995; Andrieu and Creutin, 1995; Vignal et al, 1999; Germann and Joss, 2002; Gray et al, 2002; Vignal et al, 2000; Zhang and Qi, 2010; Kirstetter et al, 2013).
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