EUREC 4 A's Maria S. Merian ship-based cloud and micro rain radar observations of clouds and precipitation

• Published in: Earth system science data Vol. 14; no. 1; pp. 33 - 55
• Main Authors: Acquistapace, Claudia, Coulter, Richard, Crewell, Susanne, Garcia-Benadi, Albert, Gierens, Rosa, Labbri, Giacomo, Myagkov, Alexander, Risse, Nils, Schween, Jan H.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 10.01.2022
• ISSN: 1866-3516; 1866-3516
• DOI: 10.5194/essd-14-33-2022

As part of the EUREC4A field campaign, the research vessel Maria S. Merian probed an oceanic region between 6 to 13.8∘ N and 51 to 60∘ W for approximately 32 d. Trade wind cumulus clouds were sampled in the trade wind alley region east of Barbados as well as in the transition region between the trades and the intertropical convergence zone, where the ship crossed some mesoscale oceanic eddies. We collected continuous observations of cloud and precipitation profiles at unprecedented vertical resolution (7–10 m in the first 3000 m) and high temporal resolution (1–3 s) using a W-band radar and micro rain radar (MRR), installed on an active stabilization platform to reduce the impact of ship motions on the observations. The paper describes the ship motion correction algorithm applied to the Doppler observations to extract corrected hydrometeor vertical velocities and the algorithm created to filter interference patterns in the MRR observations. Radar reflectivity, mean Doppler velocity, spectral width and skewness for W-band and reflectivity, mean Doppler velocity, and rain rate for MRR are shown for a case study to demonstrate the potential of the high resolution adopted. As non-standard analysis, we also retrieved and provided liquid water path (LWP) from the 89 GHz passive channel available on the W-band radar system. All datasets and hourly and daily quicklooks are publically available, and DOIs can be found in the data availability section of this publication. Data can be accessed and basic variables can be plotted online via the intake catalog of the online book “How to EUREC4A”.