Microwave scattering by atmospheric ice particles

Chris Westbrook (Reading)

I will discuss how remote sensing by radar and microwave radiometers are used to measure the properties of clouds and precipitation in the ice phase, and explain how one of the key limitations to our capabilities for doing this results from poor knowledge of their scattering properties. I will present observational evidence that large snowflakes, which are aggregates of many individual crystals, have a fractal geometry, and what this means for their scattering properties and retrievals, and mention some new work on the accuracy of the Rayleigh-Gans-Debye method for computing scattering vs more sophisticated techniques.