Observation and Numerical Simulation of Cold Clouds and Snow Particles in the Yeongdong Region

The Yeongdong region of the Korean Peninsula is vulnerable to high-impact weather events, because of its complicated geographical characteristics and East Sea effect, such that heavy snowfall episodes have frequently occurred in winter. Snow crystal play an important role in cloud and precipitation physics because it is an essential element for improvement of numerical model, and remote sensing retrieval such as radar and satellite. In this study, the high-temporal resolution (3-hourly) dataset of radiosonde soundings and snow particle photographs during the intensive observation period for 2013–2016 has been used to understand characteristics of snow particles for the different meteorological conditions in the Yeongdong region. We also attempt to simulate two episodes that occurred on 23–24 February and 13–14 December 2016; one has a single-layered cloud and the other has two-layered cloud structure. This study demonstrates that the rimed particles in the first period tend to shift to aggregates of dendrites with the decrease of 850-hPa temperature. In general, the low-level clouds in the Yeongdong region are observed along with the distinctive wind shear and strong inversion in equivalent potential temperature around 2 ~ 3 km above the sea level. The simulation successfully represents the variations of the characteristics of snow particles as well as different cloud structure for both episodes. The observation and model simulations clearly suggest that snow particles primarily depend on the 850-hPa temperature.