Measurement of cloud droplet size spectra by Doppler radar

Abstract

A new technique is examined for using Doppler radars to extract information about the size spectrum of cloud droplets too small to have terminal velocities large enough to be resolvable by the radar. If the drops are very small, motions of the drops are dominated by turbulent fluctuations in the medium rather than their fall velocity. Their motion is then the convolution of the terminal velocity with the turbulent velocity probability density function, and size information about the population can be obtained only by deconvolving the spectra. -from Author