Does Py-ART allows users to extract and analyze reflectivity values from radar data(RADOLAN), which can help in distinguishing between convective and stratiform precipitation?

Openradar
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1

Hello everyone,

My research is on “Identification of different precipitation types and its changes using high resolution Radolan data over Brandenburg, Germany”.

For that I have downloaded data fromhttps://opendata.dwd.de/climate_environment/CDC/grids_germany/hourly/radolan/historical/bin/

can some expert here provide me with a step by step work flow on how to answer my research question?

@kmuehlbauer @mgrover1

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@SandeepAllampalli while I am not able to go through a step-by-step of the methodology here, I would encourage you to check out the example @lauratomkins put together here looking at stratiform vs. convective precipitation

https://arm-doe.github.io/pyart/examples/retrieve/plot_convective_stratiform.html#sphx-glr-examples-retrieve-plot-convective-stratiform-py

As well as some of the hydrometeor classification work added by the Meteoswiss/Meteofrance group in this example

https://arm-doe.github.io/pyart/examples/retrieve/plot_hydrometeor.html#sphx-glr-examples-retrieve-plot-hydrometeor-py

I hope this helps!

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Thank you for your reply @mgrover1. I wonder how do I get the reflectivity data for Germany? Is it freely available? From the above github repo I understand it’s not possible to classify precipitation as Convective/Stratiform using RADOLAN data(RW product which contains only one data variable rain rate). Correct me if I am wrong.

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Hi @SandeepAllampalli , the radar data for Germany it is not freely available. You either have to be working in a project involving the DWD to get it for free or contact them and pay to have access. Either way it is quite a lengthy process.

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Hi @JulianGiles , which radar data are you mentioning here? As I see some products of RADOLAN are open source (for example RW product). DO you mean for my above mentioned research, RADOLAN(RW) data is not sufficient?

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I mean the raw radar data (reflectivity, ZDR, RHOHV, etc) is not freely open. I do not know of any methods for classifying precipitation types using only precipitation rates (like those from RADOLAN), you need the radar moments for that.

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Yes, if you want to classify/extract precipitation types (hydrometeorclasses) then RADOLAN RW is not enough. You have at least these options:

  • Use the single radar polarimetric moments and derive hydrometeor-classification from those (data not open, only for reflectivity and doppler a short time archive exists)
  • Use products like RE (short-time open-data, no open data long time archive) https://opendata.dwd.de/weather/radar/radvor/ which at least contains the percentage of liquid/solid and a hail flag

If you want to distinguish between convective/stratiform events: