Winter Precipitation Measurements in New England: Results from the Global Precipitation Measurement Ground Validation Campaign in Connecticut

Winter precipitation is difficult to forecast due to the multitude of atmospheric conditions that impact precipitation phase and amount. Measurements from both observers and instruments of winter precipitation are often difficult to verify because they require trust in citizen science reports, automated methods for precipitation classification or a collection of specialized ground-based instruments. During the winters of 2021-23, a NASA Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Ground Validation (GV) campaign was conducted at the University of Connecticut (UConn) in collaboration with NASA’s Investigation of Microphysics and Precipitation for Atlantic Coast Threatening Snowstorms (IMPACTS) field campaign. The goal of this campaign was to observe the various phases of winter precipitation and winter storm types to validate the GPM satellite constellation’s measurements of winter weather.

At UConn, more than 18 instruments were deployed across two observing sites, which captured 80 unique precipitation events. These instruments included NASA’s Aerosol, Cloud, Humidity, Interactions Exploring and Validating Enterprise (ACHIEVE) Doppler cloud radar and the NASA-CSU Dual-frequency Dual-polarized Doppler Radar (D3R), along with suites of in-situ sensors. In this presentation, we will introduce a wide-ranging set of measurements collected from instrument suite for the February 28^th, 2023 storm, when between 6 and 8 inches of snow fell at the observing sites. We will also discuss the strengths and limitations of each instrument, how these observations can be combined with other datasets to validate ground-based and remote sensing measurements and highlight important atmospheric processes that impact winter precipitation type and amount.