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SUMMARY:EESS talk on "Measuring snowfall in Antarctica: the APRES3 project
 "
DTSTART:20160607T121500
DTEND:20160607T131500
DTSTAMP:20260528T092923Z
UID:6a488a450257b4a495366ce8ec05f46e28c9340448c388407f1623fc
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Dr Jacopo Grazioli\, LTE\nAbstract:\nAntarctica is an inhospit
 able continent. The only possible in-situ measurement networks are those f
 or which robust methods and sensors exist that can run in fully automatic 
 mode\, unattended over long periods of time\, and exposed to harsh conditi
 ons. This is not the case for the measurement of precipitation. The measur
 ement of snowfall is notoriously difficult in general\, and difficulties a
 re exacerbated in Antarctica. On the high Antarctic plateau\, where less t
 han 20 mm of equivalent water are thought to accumulate each year\, frost 
 deposition and extreme cold temperature adversely affect traditional preci
 pitation gauges. At the coastal regions\, catabatic winds induce frequent 
 blowing snow which blur snowfall observation. A lack of validation data ma
 y be a reason why climate models (used to predict climate trends) consider
 ably diverge. The models all predict that antarctic precipitation will inc
 rease in a warming climate and unsurprisingly they diverge as to the magni
 tude of the increase. There is thus a strong need for a model-free (i.e. n
 ot based on meteorological analyses or re-analyses) dataset of antarctic p
 recipitation to evaluate and validate the models.\nThe APRES3 (Antarctic P
 recipitation: REmote Sensing from Surface and Space) campaign was recently
  launched and a first field experiment took place from November 2015 until
  February 2016.  Instruments dedicated to the observation of solid precip
 itation have been deployed at the French Antarctic station Dumont d'Urvill
 e on the coast of Adélie Land in Antarctica. On the remote sensing side\,
  a depolarization lidar and two weather radars were nearly collocated. For
  measurement at the ground level\, a weighing gauge (with wind shield) and
  a multi-angle snowflake camera (MASC) were complementing the remote sensi
 ng instruments. In addition\, daily radiosounding records collected by Met
 eoFrance were available. The measurements collected by these instruments c
 over many aspects of precipitation\, never measured before in this locatio
 n: from the vertical development of snow-generating clouds and their large
  scale (km) features\, until the accumulation of snow at the ground level 
 and the shape\, size\, type  of individual ice crystals and snowflakes.\n
 This experimental set up is a first step towards understanding Antarctic p
 recipitation at its different scales\, as well as to evaluate the added va
 lue of remote sensing instruments to monitor snowfall in this environment.
 Short biography:\nJacopo Grazioli is a postdoctoral researcher at the Envi
 ronmental Remote Sensing (LTE) laboratory at EPFL. He holds Bachelor and M
 aster degrees in Environmental Engineering from the University of Padua\, 
 Italy and a PhD obtained at LTE in July 2015.  After an experience as sci
 entific expert for Meteo Swiss\, he currently conducts his post-doc at EPF
 L within the framework of the APRES3 campaign\, aiming at measuring precip
 itation on the Antarctic continent.
LOCATION:GR C0 01 http://plan.epfl.ch/?room=GR%20C0%2001
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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