Microphysical Characterization of Ice in Hurricane Erin for Wideband Passive Microwave Comparisons
In order to better understand the characteristics of frozen hydrometeors in hurricane systems, computed brightness temperatures were compared with observations of Hurricane Erin from CAMEX-4 radiometers on the ER-2 aircraft. These wideband observations ranged from 10.7 to 183 plus or minus 10 GHz. In order to initialize the cloud profiles used in the radiative transfer calculations, radar reflectivities from an ER-2 instrument were converted to mass contents at specified height levels. Dropsonde data from the ER-2 and modeled Hurricane Andrew data were used to generate profiles of temperature, pressure, and relative humidity and to provide surface wind speed and ocean temperature. Four different ice (size and density) parameterizations were used to compute brightness temperature values. The comparisons between the calculated and observed brightness temperatures show that in general the Grenfell and Warren particle size distribution does the best job of matching the observations for most of the high frequencies. These high frequencies (greater than or equal to 85 GHz) are particularly sensitive to frozen particles. The Sehkon and Srivastava particle size distribution produced brightness temperatures that were too cold in most cases. On the other hand, the fluffy snow particle parameterizations with and without a melting layer produced brightness temperatures that were much warmer than the observations at these high frequencies. All low frequency calculations track the observations well except in the eye of Hurricane Erin where the surface wind speed and/or near surface temperatures were not properly adjusted to warm the brightness temperature calculations to values closer to the observations. Overall, this work shows that selecting a proper ice particle parameterization can be difficult and additional in situ measurements are needed to define appropriate parameterizations.