Radar velocity variance and hydrometeor classification

The present study focuses on the variance of the radar velocity, and shows this parameter is useful to discriminate between liquid and solid phase hydrometeors within stratiform precipitation. After selecting several case studies extracted from the MAP experiment RONSARD radar data set (1999) during which the atmosphere was sampled at high elevation, it is shown that the variance vertical profiles are dramatically different in the liquid region, below the 0°C isotherm, and in the solid precipitation region above. It is also shown that some information is also extracted from the variance within convective precipitation. Comparison of these cases with the results of polarimetric radar data gathered during the same experiment by means of the S-POL radar sow that the variance could be exploited in the fuzzy logic algorithms for hydrometeor classification.