Winter 2006-2007 Snowfall Field Campaign

The NASA GPM Project and the Precipitation Measurement Mission (PMM) Science Team participated in to the Canadian CloudSat/CALIPSO Validation Programme (C3VP) during winter 2006-2007. The campaign took place in the vicinity of the Centre for Atmospheric Research Experiments (CARE) operated by the Meteorological Service of Canada. All members of NASA's PMM Science Team are covered by a "blanket" agreement that allows them full access to the C3VP data, subject to the C3VP Data Protocol.  

The CARE facility is located about 80 km north of Toronto.

Results from C3VP

Results are now available from a snowfall event that took place on December 6, 2006 over the CARE site. These results include data from a Snow Video Imager (SVI) and a pair of Parsivel disdrometers.

+ Snow Video Imager results from IOP-2
+ Parsivel Disdrometer results from IOP-2)
+ 2-Dimensional Video Disdrometer (2DVD) from IOP-2
+ Parsivel Distrometer Results presented at the American Geophysical Union, Spring 2007
+ 2D video simulations of DSD and Ze for all C3VP significant snow days 6 Dec 2006 - 6 March 2007

The third C3VP Intensive Observation Period (IOP-3) took place January 17 through January 28, 2007. A series of instrumented aircraft flights were conduced during the IOP with the National Research Center of Canada's Convair-580 aircraft. The Convair-580 had cloud microphysics instruments, radiometers, a lidar and radars. The aircraft complemented ground-based observations made at the CARE site as well as observations made by the King City C-band and X-band radars during the C3VP campaign.

In all, 9 snowfall events were observed during IOP-3. All of these events were observed by the King City radars, 8 of the events were observed by the University of Massachusetts 3-frequency (W-, Ka, and Ku-band) Advanced Multi-Frequency Radar (AMFR), and 3 of the events were also observed with Convar-580 overflights.  A case summary of the dates, times, snowfall types, and instruments used during these 9 IOP-3 snowfall events is available.

Published results from C3VP:

+ NASA/GPM Participation in C3VP - Physical process studies in show
+ Disdrometer - Derived Z-S Relations in South Central Ontario, Canada

Access to C3VP Data

Summary table and instructions for how to access C3VP data.

Data products from many investigators are available without restriction and can be accessed via the ftp sites identified in the table. Points-of-contact listed on the table can be consulted for more information on the data format and content, and on other details of data access and use. A number of the products listed in the table were generated from instruments operated by C3VP Principal Investigators. These data products are available according to the conditions identified in the C3VP data protocol. The Points-of-contact identified in the table should be contacted for more information on data availability and access. Data products with few or no restrictions include those from the following instruments and data sources:

• Snow Video Imager
• Parsivel disdrometer
• Tipping bucket gauges
• AMSU-B/MHS brightness temperatures
• Advanced Multi-Frequency Radar
• 2-Dimensional Video Disdrometer
• GOES imager and sounder
• WRF model output