NASA Participation in the International Collaborative Experiment for the PyeongChang Olympics and Paralympic Winter 2018 Games (ICE-POP)

The International Collaborative Experiment for the PyeongChang Olympics and Paralympic Winter 2018 Games (ICE-POP) focuses on the measurement, physics, modeling, and prediction of heavy orographic snow in the PyeongChang Region of South Korea from January to March, 2018. ICE-POP is led by the Korean Meteorological Administration (KMA) as a component of the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) World Weather Research Program (WWRP) Research and Development and Forecast Demonstration Projects (RDP/FDP). The overarching ICE-POP goal is to gain a better understanding of orographic frozen precipitation processes, with the expectation that ICE-POP activities will also improve operational weather forecasts and KMA-led decision support during the 2018 Winter Olympics. A coordinated array of surface, air and ship-borne meteorological instrumentation, radars, and numerical weather prediction (NWP) tools from numerous international partners (including NASA) support meeting ICE-POP objectives. NASA’s participation in the ICE-POP RDP/FDP involves Marshall and Goddard Space Flight Centers collaborating as a team to achieve the following:

• Conduct physical validation of GPM satellite-based falling snow retrievals over orography through deployment of the GPM Ground-Validation Dual-Frequency Dual-Polarimetric Doppler Radar (D3R; Ku-Ka bands) with accompanying Micro Rain Radars, weighing gauges, disdrometers and snow imaging instrumentation,
• Apply the analysis of ICE-POP observations to test and improve bulk microphysical parameterizations used for representing ice and snowfall growth processes in cloud-resolving models, the NASA Unified-Weather Research and Forecasting (NU-WRF) model, and satellite data simulators,
• Provide and evaluate NASA Earth Science data products to weather prediction and decision support activities during ICE-POP. This effort includes the development, refinement and testing of new satellite-based passive microwave imager retrievals of sensible/latent-heat fluxes for testing during the RDP in model data assimilation, and
• Test and demonstrate NU-WRF NWP system as part of the ICE-POP FDP and evaluate different model configurations (parameterizations, resolution, assimilation, etc.) as part of the RDP.

The outcome of NASA’s involvement in ICE-POP will be the contribution of observational and modeling data that, as part of the larger ICE-POP dataset, will provide a more comprehensive understanding of orographic snowfall processes — a necessary step for improving and/or developing satellite-based snowfall retrieval algorithms and improved snow microphysics in weather prediction models. This presentation will give an overview of NASA’s participation in ICE-POP, offering highlights of the topics noted above using examples from the Winter Olympics and Paralympics field campaign.