Relationship between cloud characteristics and radar reflectivity based on aircraft and cloud radar co-observations

Cloud properties were investigated based on aircraft and cloud radar co-observation conducted at Yitong, Jilin, Northeast China. The aircraft provided in situ measurements of cloud droplet size distribution, while the millimeter-wavelength cloud radar vertically scanned the same cloud that the aircraft penetrated. The reflectivity factor calculated from aircraft measurements was compared in detail with simultaneous radar observations. The results showed that the two reflectivities were comparable in warm clouds, but in ice cloud there were more differences, which were probably associated with the occurrence of liquid water. The acceptable agreement between reflectivities obtained in water cloud confirmed that it is feasible to derive cloud properties by using aircraft data, and hence for cloud radar to remotely sense cloud properties. Based on the dataset collected in warm clouds, the threshold of reflectivity to diagnose drizzle and cloud particles was studied by analyses of the probability distribution function of reflectivity from cloud particles and drizzle drops. The relationship between reflectivity factor (Z) and cloud liquid water content (LWC) was also derived from data on both cloud particles and drizzle. In comparison with cloud droplets, the relationship for drizzle was blurred by many scatter points and thus was less evident. However, these scatters could be partly removed by filtering out the drop size distribution with a large ratio of reflectivity and large extinction coefficient but small effective radius. Empirical relationships of Z-LWC for both cloud particles and drizzle could then be derived.