Abstract:
Ice cloud microphysical parameters play an important role in climate change and precipitation process. In this paper, a Ka-band ground-based cloud radar observations of two ice clouds case that occurred on 2 April 2022 and 25 April 2022 over Nanjing are used for study. Based on empirical relationships and Doppler spectra, the microphysical parameters of ice-cloud and rainfall-cloud are retrieved and analyzed. The results show that: (1) ice water content (IWC) retrievals from empirical relationships of both
Z-IWC and
Z-IWC-
T are acceptable. The
Z-IWC-
T retrieval is better, and there are some differences between the two retrievals; (2) the number concentration of ice crystals in ice clouds ranges from 10
4 to 10
7 m
-3, the effective diameter varies from 40 to 100 μm, and the ice-water content is between 10
−4 and 10
−1 g/m
3, all of which are smaller than their corresponding values in rainfall-clouds. In addition, variations of ice-cloud microphysical parameters are analyzed by referring to the skewness and kurtosis of the Doppler spectra during the period when ice crystals melt to water droplets in the falling process. The melting and collide-coalescence in ice-cloud greatly affect cloud microphysics and radar measurements.