Characterization of Macrophysical Characteristics of Clouds and Precipitation during the CAMP2Ex Field Campaign

Aerosols play an important role in cloud formation; they act to modulate the processes that form cloud droplets and can impact the properties and lifetime of clouds. However, changes in cloud macrostructure and microphysics due to aerosol loading remain poorly constrained for precipitating tropical cumulus congestus clouds. This affects quantify the constraint of the radiative and hydrologic impact of such clouds, which are ubiquitous over many tropical regions. The NASA CAMP2Ex (Clouds, Aerosol and Monsoon Processes-Philippines Experiment) field campaign deployed two NASA aircraft platforms, the NASA P-3 and SPEC Learjet aircraft, equipped with remote sensing and in situ microphysical probes to characterize cloud and precipitation structure, aerosol layers, and atmospheric state variables. In total, nineteen research flights were conducted around the Philippines and data was collected in a variety of conditions. In our study, the macrostructure of clouds is characterized using multi-frequency Advanced Precipitation Radar-3 (APR-3) radar (Ka, Ku and, W band radar). Data were analyzed to characterize the radar reflectivity and Doppler-inferred motion structure of clouds and precipitation on CAMP2Ex flights as revealed by the three wavelengths of APR-3, as well as their path-integrated attenuation characteristics. The analysis is performed using a cell-based identification - classification machine learning technique was applied to our dataset to obtain the cloudy regions and measure their depth, size, top, shape, vertical motions, among other macrophysical parameters. Results contrast the macrostructure of clouds in varying meteorological and aerosol environments.