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Do all raindrops fall at terminal speed

TLDR
In this article, the authors show that many intermediate sized raindrops fall up to an order of magnitude faster than expected and that these super-terminal drops are differently sized fragments of a recent break-up, moving with the speed of the parent drop and relaxing towards vt(D).
Abstract
[1] A unique relation between raindrop size and fall speed vt(D) is assumed throughout atmospheric science. Yet, our speed versus size measurements of millions of drops during natural rainfall events show that many intermediate sized raindrops fall up to an order of magnitude faster than expected. Furthermore, images of drop clusters reveal that these “super-terminal drops” are differently sized fragments of a recent break-up, moving with the speed of the parent drop and relaxing towards vt(D). Additional evidence of the break-up conjecture includes: (i) positive skewness in the distribution of fall speed deviations, (ii) strong size dependence of fall speed deviations and their maximum values and, (iii) preponderance of super-terminal drops in the presence of large raindrops (i.e., during periods of high rainfall rates).

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Journal ArticleDOI

Distributions of Raindrop Sizes and Fall Velocities in a Semiarid Plateau Climate: Convective versus Stratiform Rains

TL;DR: In this article, the joint size and fall velocity distributions of raindrops were measured with a Particle Size and Velocity (PARSIVEL) precipitation particle disdrometer in a field experiment conducted during July and August 2007 at a semiarid continental site located in Guyuan, Ningxia Province, China (36°N, 106°16′E).
Journal ArticleDOI

Rain Drop Measurement Techniques: A Review

TL;DR: For over a century there have been many studies that describe the use of rain drop measurement techniques and their relative performance as discussed by the authors. But despite these numerous studies, there has been few comparative reviews of the range of methodologies, and their performance.
Journal ArticleDOI

Characteristics of the raindrop size distributions and their retrieved polarimetric radar parameters in northern and southern China

TL;DR: In this paper, the characteristics of raindrop size distributions and polarimetric radar parameters retrieved by T-matrix for stratiform and convective precipitation in Beijing and Zhangbei (northern China), and Yangjiang (southern China) are studied and compared based on RSD data observed with PARSIVEL disdrometers in these three different climatic regions.
Journal ArticleDOI

Toward Completing the Raindrop Size Spectrum: Case Studies Involving 2D-Video Disdrometer, Droplet Spectrometer, and Polarimetric Radar Measurements

TL;DR: In this paper, a 3D-video disdrometer and a collocated Meteorological Particle Spectrometer (MPS) were used to measure the drop size distributions in two different regions (Greeley, Colorado and Huntsville, Alabama).
Journal ArticleDOI

Toward Monitoring Surface and Subsurface Lakes on the Greenland Ice Sheet Using Sentinel-1 SAR and Landsat-8 OLI Imagery

TL;DR: In this article, a semi-automated algorithm is developed to detect surface lakes from Landsat-8 and Sentinel-1 images during the 2015 summer, which has a comparable temporal resolution to MODIS (3 days versus daily) but a higher spatial resolution (25-40 m versus 250-500 m).
References
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Book

Microphysics of Clouds and Precipitation

TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on one major aspect of cloud microphysics, which involves the processes that lead to the formation of individual cloud and precipitation particles, and provide an account of the major characteristics of atmospheric aerosol particles.
Book

Characterization of ceramics

TL;DR: This article reviewed the principles of Doppler radar and emphasized the quantitative measurement of meteorological parameters, and illustrated the relation of radar data and images to atmospheric phenomena such as tornadoes, microbursts, waves, turbulence, density currents, hurricanes, and lightning.
Journal ArticleDOI

The terminal velocity of fall for water droplets in stagnant air

TL;DR: In this article, the terminal velocities for distilled water droplets falling through stagnant air are accurately determined using a new method employing electronic techniques, and the over-all accuracy of the massterminal-velocity measurements is better than 0.7 per cent.
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