Characterization of Precipitation During the ORACLES 2016-17 Campaigns

During the ObseRvations of Aerosols above CLouds and their intEractionS (ORACLES) campaign, the 3^rd generation Advanced Precipitation Radar (APR-3) collected over 1.1 million usable profiles for retrieving precipitation. We utilize an adapted version of CloudSat’s 2C-RAIN-PROFILE (2C-RP) precipitation retrieval algorithm to characterize and quantify precipitation during the ORACLES 2016 and 2017 campaigns. Approximately 29% of all cloudy profiles during the 2016 campaign were precipitating, whereas 15% of all cloudy profiles were precipitating during the 2017 campaign. The larger number of profiles taken near the African coast during 2016, where drizzling coastal fog was frequently observed, likely explains most of this difference. The difference in rainfall statistics between the two campaigns is also linked to estimated inversion strength (EIS): precipitating StCu clouds in 2016 were generally found to occur in environments where EIS was on the order of 6-10 K, compared to 2-6 K during the 2017 campaign. More open-cell StCu and trade cumulus was also observed during the 2017 campaign, and as a result, mean rainfall rates were higher than in 2016. The results indicate that the different environments sampled during the two campaigns had a substantial impact on the incidence and magnitude of precipitation sampled. Individual flight legs from each year, where synoptic-scale low-pressure systems and other ambient weather features affected precipitation processes, will be examined.