Waiting for the Rain near Traer, Iowa

From May 1 to June 15,  the Iowa Flood Studies, or IFloodS campaign is taking place in eastern Iowa. NASA and the Iowa Flood Center at the University of Iowa are measuring rainfall with ground instruments, ground radar, and satellites, and then evaluating flood forecasting models and precipitation measurements from space.

We have been waiting for rain at the NPOL site. Yesterday evening it got very close- within 50 km or so. In the interim, we were waiting for convective cells to develop along what is called a radar “fine-line”.  Fine-lines are little boundaries in the lowest part of the atmosphere associated with small changes in wind, temperature and/or humidity that often work to focus bugs. They are very visible to the radar and are often (though not always) associated with a line of cumuliform clouds which will sit over the top of the boundary. The clouds form in response to convergence and mixture of the moisture along the fine line and tend to “ride” it as it propagates along. Often, deeper more vigorous rain cells will develop along these lines as they intersect other cloud rolls or boundaries.

May 1, 2013. Clouds along the “fine-line”, a boundary that means a change in wind, temperature and/or humidity is occurring. Credit: Walt Petersen / NASA

At any rate, we watched one of these boundaries for quite some time yesterday with the radar. It passed NPOL in the afternoon (below) and I went out to take a quick picture of the clouds along it (above; which were unimpressive…..alas).  However, southwest of Des Moines there were a few severe storms that developed along the same line; just didn’t happen in our area.

NPOL radar view of the “fine-line.” Clouds and rain are shown in blue. The NPOL position is labeled in white and the line of green sites show where the ground instruments are located. Credit: NASA

Today (currently) we are awaiting a major storm system that is sitting just to our west and northwest and producing rain mixed with snow in the northwest corner of Iowa — the same system that was producing snow in Colorado early this morning. It looks to be wet and cold here for the next few days after the storm arrives. If and when we get the rain/snow mix, we will focus very hard on coordinated scanning with the D3R as this will be a very unique opportunity for us to collect data in a mixed-phase event with three different radar frequencies at dual-polarization. Since this situation happens more often in the mid-latitudes, and GPM will extend our rain and snowfall measurement capability into the mid-latitudes, this could be a great case for looking at the famous “rain-snow line” transition and how our GPM radar and radiometer algorithms will work in this situation.

Walt Petersen is the Ground Validation Scientist for the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission, based at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

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Meet the 2-D Video Disdrometer

A rain gauge will collect how much rain falls, but how exactly do scientists measure the size, shape, and fall speed of raindrops near the ground? Patrick Gatlin of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, sent us a couple photos from Iowa of the instrument that does exactly that: a two-dimensional video disdrometer.

Patrick Gatlin (NASA/MSFC) and Merhala Thurai (Colorado State Univ.) perform calibration tests on a NASA two-dimensional video disdrometer (2DVD) being used to measure the size, shape and fall speed of raindrops for the IFloodS campaign. Credit: NASA

Shaped like a giant pizza box, the disdrometer has a medium sized square opening in the center. Along two adjacent sides at 90 degrees from each other are two video camera systems that record the raindrops as they fall. With a front view and side view of the droplets, scientists can determine their size and shape, and get an idea of how many of differing sizes are falling.

Hamburger shaped raindrop viewed by the disdrometer software from the front (left) and side (right). Credit: Patrick Gatlin / NASA

“A common misconception is that raindrops are shaped like a tear-drop, but actually they are shaped more like a hamburger bun similar to the 5 mm sized raindrop shown here,” Gatlin says. During IFloodS, millions of raindrops will be measured by these type of rainfall sensors. Scientists will examine all these raindrops in order to provide better estimates of rainfall from weather radars probing the atmosphere from the ground up and those looking down on Earth from space, like the eventual GPM Core satellite.

Apr. 8, 2013. NASA and Iowa Flood Center staff set up about 20 disdrometers throughout the field area in April. Credit: Aneta Goska / Iowa Flood Center

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NPOL Radar Site near Traer, Iowa

Walt Petersen is the Ground Validation Scientist for the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission, based at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. He manages all of GPM’s ground validation operations, the field campaigns that ensure that satellites measure rainfall and precipitation from space accurately.

From May 1 to June 15, he is leading the Iowa Flood Studies, or IFloodS campaign in eastern Iowa. He and his team, as well as their partners at the Iowa Flood Center at the University of Iowa are measuring rainfall with ground instruments, ground radar, and satellites, and then evaluating flood forecasting models. Over the next few weeks, Walt and others on the ground will be sending us their notes from the field.

4/29/2013, NPOL Radar Site near Traer, Iowa

Apr 29, 2013. The NASA Polerametric (NPOL) precipitation radar (center) scans for rainfall in both the horizontal and vertical planes to measure precipitation throughout the whole volume of the air column. The smaller D3R radar is to the far left. Credit NASA

This morning, my first full day around the area of Waterloo, Iowa. Quite appropriately, we were greeted by severe thunderstorms with some ping pong ball-sized hail in the area. Luckily for my rental car,  and even more luckily for the NPOL and D3R antennas, that hail stayed north of the radar site (large hail, rental cars, and/or radar antennas not being the best mix). I thought it an appropriate welcoming to the experiment. I drove out to the radar for the first time this morning in my little Nissan rental car. I’ll be curious to see how it does on the gravel/dirt road after it rains a few inches.

Apr. 25, 2013. A team of NASA staff and Iowa Flood Center and University of Iowa students assist with the NPOL setup in eastern Iowa. Credit: Aneta Goska, Iowa Flood Center.

Things are impressive out here. The NPOL and D3R guys did a very nice job of getting the NPOL and D3R set up. We are still in the midst of tweaking small things prior to getting down to serious data collection. For example, we need to make certain that the NPOL is well-calibrated (doing that now), and then we need to test the timing of our scan sequences to make sure we are making the requirement that we sample the rain field in a 360 degree circle once every 3 minutes or less. The objective is to make rapid maps of rainfall (out to a range of say, 150 km, from the NPOL) at high time and space resolution, and then in between making those rain maps, do coordinated scanning of the precipitation in the vertical plane with the D3R radar or over other river basins of interest. The rapidly collected rain maps serve as a reference for doing our comparisons to satellite products and to test products for hydrologic modeling of runoff (e.g., flood forecasting).

Apr. 29, 2013. The science trailer where data from the radars is collected. From left to right, Walt Petersen, Dave Wolff, and Delbert Willie. Credit: NASA

The coordinated scanning with the D3R is done for a slightly different reason. These scans are collected along a line that has many raingauges and disdrometers located at different points so that we can connect the dots between the rainfall we are measuring near the ground (for example, rainfall rates and raindrop sizes, numbers and shapes) to the physics happening in the column of the atmosphere above those points (e.g., how the rain is made). We care about this from the perspective of testing algorithms designed to retrieve precipitation estimates from space using the GPM DPR radar (which has similar frequencies to the D3R) which will fly on the GPM Core satellite.

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