Monday, 14 January 2002
Mt. Washington Icing Sensors Project (MWISP) cloud particle habit analysis
In April 1999, the U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) gathered nearly 150 hours of cloud particle data in support of the Mt. Washington Icing Sensors Project (MWISP), a large field campaign that made diverse remotely sensed and in situ measurements. One of the main purposes of MWISP was to investigate the possibility of remotely detecting conditions that would be conducive to aircraft icing. CRREL used a Forward Scattering Spectrometer Probe (FSSP) and two Optical Array Probes (OAP), developed by Particle Measuring Systems Inc. (PMS), to collect cloud particle data from the summit of Mt. Washington during this period. These data can be useful for interpreting the remote measurements. In this study, manual and automated techniques were used to examine cloud particle habits in four categories--dendrites, spheres, needles/columns, and irregulars. Manual analyses were used to verify the results obtained from an automated algorithm developed by Korolev and Sussman (2000). The manual/automated comparisons revealed several minor inconsistencies that were addressed by subsequent software modifications. This paper will summarize the weather conditions reported for the various cloud particle measurement periods during MWISP and provide the corresponding habit results.
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