Multifractal comparison of the outputs of two optical disdrometers

In this paper a universal multifractals comparison of the outputs of two types of collocated optical disdrometers installed on the roof of the Ecole des Ponts ParisTech is performed. A Campbell Scientific PWS100 which analyses the light scattered by the hydrometeors and an OTT Parsivel² which analyses the portion of occluded light are deployed. Both devices provide a binned distribution of drops according to their size and velocity. Various fields are studied across a range of scales: rain rate (R), liquid water content (ρ), polarimetric weather radar quantities such the horizontal reflectivity (Z_h) and the specific differential phase (K_dp), and drop size distribution (DSD) parameters such as the total drop concentration (N_t) and the mass-weighted diameter (D_m). For both devices, good scaling is retrieved on the whole range of available scales (2 h–30 s), except for the DSD parameters for which the scaling only holds down to few minutes. For R, the universal multifractal parameters are found to equal 1.5 and 0.2 for α and C₁, respectively. Results are interpreted with the help of the classical Z_h–R and R–K_dp radar relations.