Ship based remote sensing of vertical velocities and turbulence in DYNAMO

Vertical velocity of cloud droplets and hydrometeors was measured by the NOAA 94-GHz Doppler cloud radar. Vertical velocity of the boundary layer below cloud was measured by the NOAA HRDL, providing seamless turbulence measurements of the boundary layer through the cloud.

Of particular interest are periods of several hours when weak stratiform precipitation with uniform fall velocity descended from the melting level through the lower 4 km of the atmosphere. In these cases perturbations to the radar Doppler velocity are interpreted as vertical air motion, allowing unprecedented clear air vertical velocity and turbulence comparisons between the lidar and cloud radar.