Speaker
Description
The drop size distribution (DSD) describes the number and size of raindrops in a volume of air. Knowledge of the DSD is key to model the propagation of microwave signals through the atmosphere (crucial for telecommunication, radar remote sensing and opportunistic rainfall sensing), to improve microphysical schemes in numerical weather prediction models, and to understand rain-related land surface processes (rainfall interception, soil erosion).
Despite its importance, the spatial and temporal variability of the DSD remains poorly understood. This has motivated scientists all around the globe to deploy DSD recording instruments known as disdrometers. However, only a small fraction of these data is easily accessible by the research community. Data are stored in disparate formats with poor documentation, making them difficult to share, analyze, compare and re-use. Additionally, very limited software is currently publicly available for DSD processing.
The DISDRODB initiative tackles these issues by establishing (i) a decentralized archive of disdrometer observations, (ii) a publicly accessible station metadata repository hosted on GitHub, and (iii) an open-source Python package to facilitate downloading of raw station data and producing quality-controlled, analysis-ready Level-1 and Level-2 products.
Currently, the DISDRODB archive integrates data from nearly 1,000 stations contributed by more than 40 institutions. The DISDRODB products can be used to characterize global DSD variability, derive rainfall scaling laws at short spatio-temporal scales, and analyze relationships between integral DSD parameters and radar polarimetric variables at multiple frequency.
By consolidating and mobilizing existing data archive, the presented global database of standardized disdrometer measurements and derived products aims to accelerate and advance precipitation research as well as foster international collaborations.
Documentation: https://disdrodb.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
Software: https://github.com/ltelab/disdrodb
Metadata repository: https://github.com/ltelab/DISDRODB-METADATA