Intercomparison of Solid Precipitation Derived from the Weighting Rain Gauge and Optical Instruments in the Interior Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

Abstract

Due to the light precipitation and strong wind in the cold season, it is hard to get credible solid precipitation on the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau (QTP). To address this issue, two kinds of optical instruments, the Thies Laser Precipitation Monitor (LPM) and OTT laser-optical Particle Size Velocity (Parsivel), were used on QTP. The measured precipitation was compared with the precipitation derived from Geonor T-200B precipitation gauge (Geonor). The results showed that Geonor was hard to catch light precipitation (precipitation amount was less than 1 mm during a single event) when the wind speeds were higher than 3.5 m/s. Even when the wind speeds were smaller than 3.5 m/s, about 44% of such light precipitation events were not recorded by Geonor. The optical instruments had much better performance in recording light precipitation. Three methods were used to correct Geonor measurements of daily solid precipitation and the corrected values were set as reference for assessing the performance of LPM and Parsivel; the results showed that LPM had good performance in measuring the solid precipitation but Parsivel overestimated the precipitation amount. Methods for correcting Geonor’s hourly solid precipitation and recalculating Parsivel’s solid precipitation amount were also proposed in this paper.

Characterization of snowfall estimated by in situ and ground-based remote-sensing observations at Terra Nova Bay, Victoria Land, Antarctica

“…Only a few articles have argued that the precipitation rate calculated internally is reliable with respect to snow gauge measurements on a daily basis (e.g. Zhang and others, 2015). However, the algorithm used by Thies CLIMA for SF calculation of density parameterization as a function of temperature, particle fall speed and diameter, has not yet been published (M. Hillebrecht, personal communication) and consequently is not available for use in research.…”

Improvement of Snow Gauge Collection Efficiency through a Knowledge of Solid Precipitation Fall Speed

“…Many studies used laser disdrometers to study rain drop distribution (e.g., Angulo-Martínez et al 2018;Raupach and Berne 2015;Kim and Lee 2016;Chen et al 2016). Laser disdrometers have also been applied to differentiate between solid and liquid precipitation types (Thériault et al 2018), as well as to estimate solid precipitation amounts (Zhang et al 2015).…”

Comparison of precipitation measurements by OTT Parsivel<sup>2</sup> and Thies LPM optical disdrometers

“…Parsivel disdrometers, on the other hand, have been used to determine the kinetic-energy-rainfall-intensity relationship (Petan et al, 2010;Sánchez-Moreno et al, 2012). Both disdrometers were used interchangeably in Slovenia to estimate rainfall parameters, including kinetic energy (Petan et al, 2010;Ciaccioni et al, 2010), and to inter-compare solid precipitation observations in the Tibetan Plateau (Zhang et al, 2015).…”