Establishment and preliminary application of forward modeling method for Doppler spectral density of ice particles

Abstract. Owing to the various shapes of ice particles, the relationships between fall velocity, backscattering cross-section, mass, and particle size are complicated, which affects the application of cloud radar Doppler spectral density data to retrieve the microphysical properties of ice crystals. In this paper, under the assumption of six particle shape types, the relationships between particle mass, fall velocity, backscattering cross-section, and particle size were established based on existing research. Variations of Doppler spectral density with the same particle size distribution (PSD) of different ice particle types are discussed, and the radar-retrieved liquid and ice PSDs, water content, and mean volume-weighted particle diameter are compared with airborne in situ observations in Xingtai, Hebei Province, China, in 2018. The results showed the following: (1) for particles with the same equivalent diameter (De), the fall velocity of aggregates is the largest, followed by hexagonal columns, hexagonal plates, sector plates, and stellar crystals, with ice spheres falling two to three times faster than ice crystals with the same De. Hexagonal columns have the largest backscattering cross-section, followed by stellar crystals and sector plates, and the backscattering cross-sections of hexagonal plates and two kinds of aggregates are very close to those of ice spheres. (2) The width of the simulated radar Doppler spectral density generated by various ice crystal types with the same PSD is mainly affected by particle fall velocity and increased fall velocity rates with increased particle size, as do PSDs retrieved from the same Doppler spectral density data. (3) PSD comparisons showed that each ice crystal type retrieved from the cloud radar corresponded well to aircraft observations within a certain scale range when assuming that only a certain type of ice crystals existed in the cloud, which can fully prove the feasibility of retrieving ice PSDs from reflectivity spectral density.