Assessment of OTT-Parsivel2 Raindrop Fall Speed Measurements

Abstract

This study was to assess the raindrop fall speed measurement capabilities of OTT-Parsivel2 disdrometer through comparisons with measurements of a collocated High-speed Optical Disdrometer (HOD). Raindrop fall speed is often assumed to be terminal in relevant hydrological and meteorological applications, and generally predicted using terminal speed - raindrop size relationships obtained from laboratory observations. Nevertheless, recent field studies have revealed that other factors (e.g. wind, turbulence, raindrop oscillations, and collisions) significantly influence raindrop fall speed, necessitating accurate fall speed measurements for many applications instead of reliance on laboratory-based terminal speed predictions. Field observations in this study covered rainfall events with a variety of environmental conditions, including light, moderate, and heavy rainfall events. This study also involved rigorous laboratory experiments to faithfully identify the internal filtering and calculation algorithm of OTT Parsivel2. Our assessments revealed that, for the smaller diameter bins, Parsivel2 filters out many of the observed raindrops that fall faster than predicted terminal speeds, bringing down the mean fall speed for those size bins without observational evidence. Furthermore, Parsivel2 fall speed measurements exhibited a notable artificial bell-shaped deviations from the predicted terminal speeds towards sub-terminal fall starting at around 1 mm diameter raindrops with peak deviations around 1.625 mm diameter bin. Such bell-shaped fall speed deviation patterns were not present in collocated HOD measurements. Assessment results along with the faithfully identified Parsivel2 algorithm are presented with discussions on implications on reported raindrop size distributions (DSD) and rainfall kinetic energy.