2nd Best talk at the Radar Conference in Japan

From the 16th to 20th of September 2019, I attended the 39th International Conference on Radar Meteorolog y in Nara (Japan). It is one of the largest conferences related to radar meteorology. This edition was th e largest one with 158 talks and 329 posters which covered a large variety of topics such as new radar te chnology, data quality control, data processing, cloud microphysics, and of observation of extreme convec tive systems. During the conference, I also had the opportunity to interct with other radar scientists.

I attended several interesting talks, but two of them were the most interesting for me. Dr. Allessandro B attaglia gave the first one, and during his presentation, he described the advantages of introducing G ba nd radars (110 and 300 GHz) for studying cloud microphysics. For example, the combination observations fr om G and other bands (Ka-, W-) would be beneficial for retrieving microphysical properties profiles of c irrus, mid-level ice, and snow-precipitating clouds. The second one was presented by Dr. Kenji Nakamura, where he showed a particular radar set-up for observing the melting layer. In this set-up, he used two Ka -band radars looking at the same part of the cloud. One radar at the top of the mountain was pointing dow nward, and another one at the bottom was pointing upward. Using this particular set-up, he was able to re trieve an attenuation profile trough the melting layer.

I had my talk during the first day of the conference. During my presentation, I showed the results of my study about the impact of large snowflakes in the rainfall. For this study, I combined observations from multifrequency Doppler radars (X-, Ka-, W-band). The results show a correlation between the intensificati on of the snow/rainfall rate and the presence of large snowflakes. The results also suggest an increase i n the thickness of the melting layer in the presence of large aggregates.

I am glad to have attended this conference for several reasons, but two are more significant for me. Firs tly, I had the opportunity to interact with other researchers/students from the same field and get/give feedbacs. Secondly, at the end of the conference, I received the prize for the second-best talk.