Measurements of atmospheric extinction using combined airborne and ground-based 95 GHz radar observations

During the boreal summer of 1998 three 95-GHz (W-band) radars were deployed by the University of Massachusetts (UMass), the Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) and NASA´s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Ground-based systems from UMass and Penn State were located at the the U.S. Department of Energy´s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program field site in northern Oklahoma. (The UMass system was later deployed in New Iberia, Louisiana.) The third 95-GHz radar, jointly developed by UMass and NASA/JPL, was mounted in a nadir-pointing orientation on the NASA DC-8 research aircraft. The experiment serves several purposes. First, it provides an opportunity to intercompare the calibrations of active research radars that are adding to the scientific archives of W-band radar observations. Second, simultaneous airborne and ground-based measurements are combined to measure precipitation attenuation