Early results from the MC3E field experiment

The Midlatitude Continental Convective Clouds Experiment (MC3E) was carried out during May-June 2011 in north central Oklahoma. The field campaign was a merger of DOE and NASA interests, and was centered at the DOE Southern Great Plains field site near Lamont, OK. From the DOE side, MC3E represented not only a test of new instrumentation deployed at SGP, but an opportunity to collect data regarding the thermodynamic and dynamic structure of non-precipitating and precipitating clouds in order to validate cloud resolving models. For NASA, MC3E was structured to provide validation data for future Precipitation Measurement Mission retrieval algorithms. Moreover, the resources deployed for MC3E by DOE and NASA resulted in an unprecedented dataset on the temporal and spatial variability of rainfall, including drop size distributions. Quantitative radars ranging from W- through S-band were deployed for MC3E, along with two research aircraft, the NASA ER-2 and the University of North Dakota Citation II. The ER-2 carried a suite of both passive and active microwave instrumentation to mimic the instruments flown on the future PMM satellite. The Citation II carried a full suite of cloud microphysical instrumentation for in-situ observations of liquid and ice based precipitation. DOE deployed a network of radiosondes for environmental characterization. To measure the spatial and temporal variability of surface rainfall, NASA deployed a dense network of raingauges and disdrometers, including 5 2D video disdrometers. We will discuss radar quality control for both the DOE X-, C-band radars and the NASA N-pol radar. Highlights from selected MC3E cases will also be presented which will demonstrate a particular strength of the MC3E dataset, which is to provide a full column view of cloud microphysical processes in ice, mixed phase and liquid precipitation. This column view of microphysical processes is valuable for both DOE model validation and NASA retrieval algorithm validation.