ParticleVolumeMonitor - RAF Instruments

'Operational Status (select from or add to list): requestable, ready for deployment
- requestable, ready for deployment
- requestable, but has problems, needs work before deployment
- not on request list but could be available if requested
- still under development and not requestable
- obsolete, should be or is retired
General Description (with photos, diagrams, etc.):
- The primary measurements from the PVM-100A are liquid water content and effective radius of cloud droplets. The measurements are based on measured scattering intensity from an ensemble of droplets at a set of angle chosen so that the result is proportional to the third moment of the size distribution (for liquid water content). There are limits to the validity for large (e.g., > 50 micrometer diameter) drops or if ice crystals are present, but the response is reliable for normal cloud-droplet sizes.
- 'Sensor head for exterior mount on C-130 only - LPO; electronics in large instrument pod'
- Photo from the Gerber Scientific web site: photograph
Measurement Characteristics:
- Overall estimate of uncertainty: 0.02 g/m^3
- Response time: 0.01 s
- Precision:
- Range: 0-5 g/m^3
- Other measurement characteristics (comments on signal/noise, bias limits, etc):

Description of Software, Data Handling, and Data Flow: Standard output from nimbus
- Software Components (data acquisition, display, processing, and analysis):
- Data Processing Chain (from flight to archival): Data processing follows the standard data path for RAF measurements: instrument -> NIDAS -> nimbus -> netCDF archives. See this page for more information.
QA Procedures and Needs:

check for zero offset changes between projects; compare to other LWC measurements

Lead Contacts

Documentation

Descriptive Publications:
- Gerber, H., 1994: New microphysics sensor for aircraft use. Atmos. Res.,, 31, 235-252.
- Gerber et al., 1998: Measurements of wave-cloud microphysical properties with two new aircraft probes. Geophys. Res. Letters, 25, 1117-1120.
- Wendisch, M., T. J. Garrett, and W. J. Strapp, 2002: Wind tunnel tests of the airborne PVM-100A response to large drops. J. Atmos. Oceanic Technol., 19, 1577--1584.
Documentation of the Processing Algorithm(s): See the Technical Note on Processing Algorithms at this URL (fix when available)

Internal users: See http://wiki.eol.ucar.edu/rafscience/ParticleVolumeMonitor (last edited 2012-12-08)