ACP Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics ACP 1680-7324 Copernicus GmbH Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acp-12-4143-2012 Lidar and radar measurements of the melting layer: observations of dark and bright band phenomena Di Girolamo P. 1 Summa D. 1 Cacciani M. 2 Norton E. G. 3 Peters G. 4 Dufournet Y. 5 Dipartimento di Ingegneria e Fisica dell'Ambiente, Università degli Studi della Basilicata, Potenza, Italy Dipartimento di Fisica, Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza", Roma, Italy School of Earth, Atmospheric & Environmental Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK Meteorologisches Institut, Universität Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands 10 05 2012 12 9 4143 4157 This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This article is available from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/12/4143/2012/acp-12-4143-2012.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/12/4143/2012/acp-12-4143-2012.pdf

Multi-wavelength lidar measurements in the melting layer revealing the presence of dark and bright bands have been performed by the University of BASILicata Raman lidar system (<i>BASIL</i>) during a stratiform rain event. Simultaneously radar measurements have been also performed from the same site by the University of Hamburg cloud radar <i>MIRA 36</i> (35.5 GHz), the University of Hamburg dual-polarization micro rain radar (24.15 GHz) and the University of Manchester UHF wind profiler (1.29 GHz). Measurements from <i>BASIL</i> and the radars are illustrated and discussed in this paper for a specific case study on 23 July 2007 during the Convective and Orographically-induced Precipitation Study (COPS). Simulations of the lidar dark and bright band based on the application of concentric/eccentric sphere Lorentz-Mie codes and a melting layer model are also provided. Lidar and radar measurements and model results are also compared with measurements from a disdrometer on ground and a two-dimensional cloud (2DC) probe on-board the ATR42 SAFIRE. Measurements and model results are found to confirm and support the conceptual microphysical/scattering model elaborated by Sassen et al. (2005).

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