Ground Validation

Content related to ground validation activities and field campaigns.

Waiting for Snow

In the CARE operations trailer monitoring weather conditions during the DC-8 flights on 6 February 2012 at approximately 9pm EST. Gail Skofronick-Jackson is the Deputy Project Scientist for GPM at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. She specializes in the remote sensing of snow, and is currently the mission scientist for the campaign at the CARE ground site in Ontario, Canada. She writes to us about a night flight on February 6 and the snow that didn't show. Models showed quickly developing snow from 9-10pm EST tonight (6 Feb 2012). We are at 9:22 and we don't yet see snow in the

Hot Plate Sensor at GCPEx

Close-up of the hot-plate sensor
Image Caption
The Hot Plate sensor provides a measure of the density of the snowflakes by forcing the top and bottom of the plates to be the same (hot) temperature. As snow (or rain) falls on the plate, they cool it.

The sensor reacts by applying voltage to maintain the equal temperatures. The voltage is then converted to Watts (a measure of the power taken to evaporate the precipitation). This power is divided by the heat needed to evaporate one gram of water, thus providing the total grams of water falling on the hot plate. Photo taken 7 February 2012.

GCPEx Ground Instruments

Multiple GCPEx ground instruments at the CARE site.
Image Caption
Three GCPEx precipitation sensors with the Environment Canada building in the background, taken 7 February 2012.

Note the low snow amounts on the ground. Sensors left to right are: ADMIRARI (radiometer; U. Bonn), D3R (radar; NASA), DPR (radar; U. Koln). [This dual-precipitation radar (DRR) is not the same as to be on the GPM spacecraft.] 

Learn more about GCPEx

GPM flying over Earth with a data swath visualized.
Summary will be updated on Fridays through the remainder of the campaign. Latest Update: 2/29/12 Date: February 25 Time: 1600 UTC Event Type: Lake Effect Aircraft: DC-8 Summary: The DC-8 flew home to Dryden Research Flight Center (DRFC) along some points that intersected with light orographic snows in New England and Lake Effect Snows in New York State. The DC-8 intersected snow over the White Mountains near Berlin and Green Mountains south of Rutland before vectoring near Utica, NY, crossing a Lake Effect Snow band southeast of Syracuse, and then traversing just north of a band across the...

Three Days, Two Snowstorms

Joe Munchak is a scientist at Goddard Space Flight Center who specializes in remote sensing of snow. This week he is at the CARE site in Ontario as one of the operations scientists for the GCPEx ground validation. It’s been a relatively eventful few days here in Barrie, Ontario, with two coordinated air-ground campaigns over the past three days. I was actually driving to Barrie from my home in Maryland during the first event (January 28th), and got to experience some lake effect snow bands first-hand in northern Pennsylvania on my way up. These were very narrow, only a few miles wide, but