ED12-0008-02
Mission: Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Cold-season Precipitation Experiment (GCPex)
NASA Goddard engineer Zhaonan Zhang adjusted the Conical Scanning Millimeter-wave Imaging Radiometer, or CoSMIR, scan head before installing it in NASA’s DC-8 flying science laboratory. The instrument was used in the GCPEx airborne study of snowfall in Canada and the northeastern United States. GCPex was conducted in cooperation with Environment Canada in Ontario, Canada from January 17th to February 29th, 2012. The goal of GCPEx was to characterize the ability of multi-frequency active and passive microwave sensors to detect and estimate falling snow through the collection of microphysical property data, associated remote sensing observations, and coordinated model simulations of falling snow. Through collection of these unique datasets, GCPEx’s goal was to improve the GPM snowfall retrieval algorithms.January 9, 2012
NASA / Tom Tschida