Scattering of Ice Particles at Microwave Frequencies: A Physically Based Parameterization

Abstract

This paper presents a new, purely physical approach to simulate ice-particle scattering at microwave frequencies. Temperature-dependent ice particle size distributions measured by aircraft in midlatitude frontal systems are used to represent the distribution of precipitation-sized frozen hydrometeors above the freezing level through derived radar reflectivity?snow water content (Z?M) relationships. The discrete dipole approximation is employed to calculate optical properties of selected types of idealized nonspherical ice particles (hexagonal columns, four-arm rosettes, and six-arm rosettes). Based on those assumptions, passive microwave optical properties are calculated using radar observations from Gotland Island in the Baltic Sea. These forward-simulated brightness temperatures are compared with observed data from both the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E) and the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit-B (AMSU-B). Results show that the new ice scattering/microphysics model is able to generate brightness temperatures that are consistent with AMSR and AMSU-B observations of two light-winter-precipitation cases. The overall differences among the various ice-habit results at 89 GHz are generally not that expansive, whereas the AMSU-B 150-GHz comparisons show increased sensitivity to ice-particle shapes.