Abstract
Precipitation is the main input for the ice sheet mass balance, which is poorly estimated over the Antarctic region. We carried out measurements of vertical profiles of precipitation over Antarctica (for the first time by an Indian team), by deploying a Micro Rain Radar (MRR) instrument onboard the South African vessel SA Aghulas during the 10th Southern Ocean Expedition of India (2017–18) to understand characteristics of precipitation in this region and compare with satellite retrievals. These expeditions provided unprecedented observations of vertical profiles of precipitation over the Southern Ocean region from 20°S to 66°S. The precipitation rate (R) measurements indicate that the majority of the precipitation events fall under the ranges of 0 < R < 5 mm/hr (about 32 events) and 5 < R < 90 mm/hr (about 44 events). We observed the presence of virga in vertical profiles of precipitation, which is very important from a climatology point of view. The vertical profiles of precipitation parameters indicate the presence of signatures of melting layers in the height range of 3.5–4.5 km above the mean sea level (msl) in the tropical region and 1.0 to 3.0 km msl in the polar region, as opposed to the fixed value of 4.86 km used. The comparison between surface MRR measurements 0–200 m and satellite precipitation rate illustrate that both datasets agree within 0.39 mm/hr with RMSE of 1.69 mm/hr and correlation of 0.86 for nearest satellite pixels surface, whereas comparison for MRR average of 0–600 m and satellite rain rate show that the datasets agree within 0.06 mm with RMSE of 1.55 mm/hr and correlation of 0.91.
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Acknowledgements
We express our sincere thanks to Director NRSC and Deputy Director, Earth and Climate Sciences Area (ECSA), NRSC. We also thank NCPOR team members for their unconditional support. We would like to acknowledge the crew of expeditions for their support of the field campaign. We thank NRSC and NCPOR administration for their support.
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Goenka, R., Anoop, S. & Ramana, M.V. Characteristics of Precipitation Over the Southern Ocean Using Micro Rain Radar and its Comparison with Space-Based Measurements. J Indian Soc Remote Sens 51, 1619–1630 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12524-023-01727-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12524-023-01727-8