Disdrometers

At the recent Ph.D. days I had a nice short talk with Katia Cugerone about disdrometers. Since she is pretty well informed I asked for some bibliography, and she promptly sent these references you will find below. She especially delighted me telling me about how in the Fourties researchers had studied the size of drops by collecting them in floor and absorbing paper.

References 

About first methods of rain drops measure (with floor and absorbing paper) 

1) Laws, J. O. & Parsons, D. A., The relation of raindrop-size to intensity, Transactions, American Geophysical Union, 1943, 24, 452-460

2) Marshall, J.; Langille, R. & Palmer, W. M. K., Measurement of rainfall by radar, Journal of Meteorology, 1947, 4, 186-192

3) Marshall, J. S. & Palmer, W. M. The distribution of raindrops with size, Journal of Meteorology, 1948, 5, 165-166

Impact Disdrometer JWD (in German) 

4) Joss, J. & Waldvogel, A. Ein spectrograph fur Niederschlasgstropfen mit automatischer Auswertung (A spectrograph for the automatic analysis of raindrops) Pure Applied Geophysics, 1967, 68, 240-246

Optic Disdrometers (THIES and Parsivel, the most famous)

5) Frasson, R. P. M., L. K. Cunha, and W. K. Krajewski (2011), Assessment of the Thies optical disdrometer performance, Atmospheric Research, 101 (1), 237{255, doi: 10.1016/j.atmosres.2011.02.014.

Video-Disdrometers (the recent ones, more precise and costly)

6) Kruger, A. & Krajewski, W. F. Two-dimensional video disdrometer: A description, Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, 2002, 19, 602-617

7) Schönhuber, M.; Lammer, G. & Randeu, W. One decade of imaging precipitation measurement by 2D-video-distrometer, Advances in Geosciences, Copernicus GmbH, 2007, 10, 85-90

A comparison between different disdrometers

8) Tokay, A.; Petersen, W. A.; Gatlin, P. & Wingo, M. Comparison of raindrop size distribution measurements by collocated disdrometers, Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, American Meteorological Society, 2013, 30, 1672-1690

Printers 3D, Arduino and hydro-meteorological stations

One of the innovative works I  had the occasion to see at the 2014 AGU Fall Meeting was the use of two emerging technologies to build low cost hydro-meterological stations. The poster was presented by Jay Ham of CSU, and a copy of it can be downloaded here.

The corner stones on which everything is built are 3D printers (Lulzbot Taz 2.0, Airwolf 3D) and the Arduino software.

A full set of instrument was presented, and frankly, I think it can be a viable way to do reasonably accurate measures and, at the same time, to multiply them ... or teaching the right way to students what an instrument is about the bottom up. The other aspect that I liked very much is that all of this is Open Hardware, a category that I never saw before. The software professor Ham built for running his weather station is  available on github.

If I never thought to build my instruments before, now I am seriously tempted to do something.

Experimental Hydrology Wiki

Today, while looking for snow pillow images I discovered this Experimental Hydrology wiki  with some interesting information. About the same subject, obviously the CUAHSI site is also a source of many resources: but since the many documents present there, is sometimes more difficult to find the stuff you are looking for.

This is what the wiki authors say:

"It will help us to learn about, recommend, question and discuss new / established / basic / advanced methods of experimental hydrology.

It will help us to avoid reinventing the wheel each time we start out measuring something we haven't measured before.

It will help us not to make the same mistakes others have made before us.

It will help us to share new ideas and concepts.

It will help us to find the methodology and the equipment suitable for our investigation.

All experimental hydrologists are welcome to contribute with their knowledge and experience!"