Welcome to disdrodb’s documentation!#
DISDRODB: A global database of raindrop size distribution observations
Motivation#
The raindrop size distribution (DSD) describes the concentration and size distributions of raindrops in a volume of air. It is a crucial piece of information to model the propagation of microwave signals through the atmosphere (key for telecommunication and weather radar remote sensing calibration), to improve microphysical schemes in numerical weather prediction models, and to understand land surface processes (rainfall interception, soil erosion).
The need for understanding the DSD spatio-temporal variability has led scientists all around the globe to “count the drops” by deploying DSD recording instruments known as disdrometers. Numerous measurement campaigns have been run by various meteorological services, national agencies (e.g. the NASA Precipitation Measurement Mission - PMM - Science Team), and university research groups. However, only a small fraction of those data is easily accessible. Data are stored in disparate formats with poor documentation, making them difficult to share, analyse, compare and reuse.
Additionally, very limited software is currently publicly available for DSD processing.
This software aims to define a standard format to save disdrometer data and to create a decentralized archive to promote the exchange of data across the scientific community.
Currently, disdrodb enables to process data acquired from the OTT Parsivel (OTT_Parsivel), OTT Parsivel2 (OTT_Parsivel2), Thies Laser Precipitation Monitor (Thies_LPM) and RD-80 (RD_80) disdrometers.