Examining Shallow Snowfall Cases by Using Ground-Based Cloud Radars

Spaceboure radars like CloudSat’s mm-wavelength cloud radar (MMCR) are the best resource for making direct measurements of falling snow on a global scale. However, one main downfall is that measurements involving clouds less than ~1-2km in height is limited. With this information, the amount of snowfall accumulation from shallow snowfall events is in question. In order to investigate this problem, the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Facility in Barrow, Alaska, which has ground-based, vertically-pointing MMCR data, is utilized. Barrow, AK serves as a useful location to study shallow snowfall events as it receives a fair amount of snowfall and on average from 2004-2011, 56% of all snowfall events in Barrow are associated with cloud top heights less than 2km and 34% of all snowfall events are below 1km. From this study, information can be gathered to exemplify how spacebourne radars like CloudSat can improve and further show how many snowfall events and how much accumulation spacebourne radars are missing from this specific ARM site and potentially other sites around of the world.