Joint Analysis of APR-2 Precipitation Vertical Structure and DAWN Vertical Wind Profiles during CPEX

The mechanisms linking convection and cloud dynamical processes is a major factor in much of the uncertainty in both weather and climate prediction. Further constraining the uncertainty in convective cloud processes linking 3-D air motion and cloud structure through models and observations is vital for improvements in weather forecasting and understanding limits on atmospheric predictability. With regards to global wind profile observing capability, at the current time the available atmospheric winds observations are primarily vapor and cloud-tracked winds from geostationary satellites that are mainly indicative of upper levels and large-scale air motion. There has been relatively little activity in jointly analyzing Doppler wind lidar (DWL) and Doppler precipitation radar observations, to study the joint variability in the storm-scale convective processes, which is needed to improve the representation of the condensed water mass field when DWL wind vectors are assimilated into cloud resolving models. During the May-June 2017 Convective Processes Experiment (CPEX), NASA DC-8-based airborne observations were collected from the JPL Ku/Ka-band Airborne Precipitation Radar (APR-2) and the 2-um Doppler Aerosol Wind (DAWN) lidar during approximately 100 flight hours. Frequent dropsonde data accompanied the DWL observations for validation purposes, and to provide complement wind profiles in and near convection. For CPEX, the APR-2 provided vertical air motion and microphysical structure (water content, phase, mean drop size) in nearby regions where DAWN is unable to sense. Conversely, DAWN sampled vertical wind profiles in aerosol-rich, no-cloud regions surrounding the convection, but is unable to measure wind field structure within cloud. In this poster, we highlight particular flight dates with specific APR2 precipitation structure, and corresponding vertical wind structures from the DAWN and dropsonde data.