McMurdie, LynnMcDonald, Victoria L2022-09-232022-09-232022-09-232022McDonald_washington_0250O_24760.pdfhttp://hdl.handle.net/1773/49258Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2022Doppler velocity retrievals from airborne radar can be used to derive kinematic properties of the environmental wind field, including horizontal deformation and divergence. Deformation is a particularly important factor in midlatitude winter storms, as it is a component of frontogenesis. Elongated bands of heavy snowfall are commonly found in regions experiencing frontogenetical uplift, and since these snowbands are difficult to forecast, being able to measure deformation from via observations will improve understanding and prediction of snowbanding events. During the Investigation of Microphysics and Precipitation for Atlantic Coast-Threatening Snowstorms (IMPACTS) field campaign, airborne radar retrievals were coordinated with in-situ microphysics measurements to document the environmental wind field in the vicinity of snowbands. This study compares wind and deformation fields derived using the Velocity-Azimuth Display technique on the ER-2 X-band (EXRAD) conically scanning radar retrievals to the High Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) weather forecast model to determine whether the wind fields are consistent with the model, and also analyzes four snowbanding events from the 2020 IMPACTS deployment. The median absolute error in wind speed is found to be 0.17 ms-1, and median absolute error in deformation is found to be 9.88 x10-5 s-1, which are very close to the errors found in previous studies analyzing hurricanes, for which this technique was developed. In two of the four cases analyzed, frontal boundaries can be identified in the derived wind fields, and in all cases deformation generally appears to be stronger in regions directly above snowbands, often collocated with frontogenesis and upwards vertical motion. Of the flight legs that had coordinated microphysics observations, generally larger numbers of smaller, denser particles were observed in regions experiencing deformation near snowbands. This is inconsistent with expectations of how aggregation and enhanced particle growth processes influence snowbands. Further study is required to establish definitive correlations between the kinematic processes presented herein and in-situ microphysics.application/pdfen-USCC BYAirborne ScienceRadar MeteorologyRemote SensingSnowstormsAtmospheric sciencesMeteorologyEnvironmental scienceAtmospheric sciencesThesis