Precipitation Insights From Vertically Pointing Radar, Surveillance Radar and Disdrometers During the Two-Year GoAmazon2014/5 Campaign

The Green Ocean Amazon (GoAmazon2014/5) field campaign recently concluded a remote two-year deployment in the central Amazon Basin to study cloud-aerosol-precipitation interactions. As part of GoAmazon2014/5, the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Mobile Facility (AMF) collected a unique set of observations in a region of strong climatic significance near Manacapuru, Brazil, a site known to experience both the pristine condition of its locale, as well as the effects of the Manaus, Brazil, mega city pollution plume. In addition to standard ARM cloud radar observations, this AMF deployment was equipped to capture a complete, continuous record of cloud and precipitation profiling and spatial properties, capitalizing on a reconfigured UHF (915 MHz) radar wind profiler (RWP) and collocated surface disdrometer measurements under the umbrella of the System for the Protection of Amazonia (SIPAM) S-band surveillance radar. Together, these sensors bolster multiple methods to understand detailed precipitation processes, including explorations into the controls of large-scale synoptic, precipitation regimes (wet/dry seasons), diurnal cycle, and possible aerosol contributions. Of interest to climate model validation and convective parameterization improvement are new Amazon insights into rainfall characteristics, drop size distribution evolution, and relationships between storm dynamical/thermodynamical properties. In addition, the fidelity of convective/stratiform partitioning as revealed from collocated RWP vertical air motion retrievals and SIPAM spatial precipitation mapping is examined.