The factors that control the production and depletion of supercooled water in the atmosphere are important to a variety of scientific and practical issues including the production of precipitation and aircraft icing. Under joint NSF and FAA sponsorship, the Winter Icing and Storms Project (WISP) will be held in the winter of 1991 in the front range of Colorado. The primary goals of the WISP are to improve understanding of processes involved in the production and depletion of supercooled liquid water content in winter storms and to improve forecast of aircraft icing in winter storms. The Principal Investigator will participate in WISP by studying the dynamical and microphysical processes in mesoscale snowbands. The research will have two primary objectives. First of all, the storm flow fields derived from Doppler radar will be used as input to a numerical model to investigate the important microphysical processes in mesoscale snowbands. Additionally, an advanced radar technique, termed differential reflectivity measurements, will be used in conjunction with in situ aircraft measurements in diagnostic studies of the storm's microphysics and to determine the utility of remote sensing of winter storm microphysical characteristics including the location of supercooled liquid water.
