In-situ cloud ground based measurements in Finnish sub-Arctic: Intercomparison of three cloud spectrometers

Abstract. Continuous, semi-long term, ground based, in-situ cloud measurements were conducted during the Pallas Cloud Experiment (PaCE) in 2013. The measurements were carried out in Finnish sub-Arctic region at Sammaltunturi station (67°58'N, 24°07'E, and 560 m a.s.l.), the part of Pallas Atmosphere – Ecosystem Supersite and Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) programme. The main motivation of the campaign was to conduct in-situ cloud measurements with three different cloud spectrometer probes and perform an evaluation of their ground based setups. Therefore, we mutually compared the performance of the Cloud and Aerosol Spectrometer (CAS), the Cloud Droplet Probe (CDP) and the Forward Scattering Spectrometer Probe (FSSP-100), (DMT, Boulder, CO, USA). We investigated how different meteorological parameters affect each instrument operation and quantified possible biases and discrepancies of different microphysical cloud properties. Based on obtained results we suggested limitations for further use of the instruments in campaigns where focus is on investigating aerosol cloud interactions. Measurements in this study were made by Finnish Meteorological Institute owned instruments and results concern their operation in sub-Arctic conditions with frequently occurring super-cooled clouds. Measured parameter from each instrument was the size distribution and additionally we derived the number concentration, the effective diameter, the median volume diameter and the liquid water content. A complete intercomparison between the CAS probe and the FSSP-100 and additionally between the FSSP-100 and the CDP probe was made and presented. Unfortunately, there was not sufficient amount of common data to compare all three probes together due to operational problems of the CDP ground setup in sub-zero conditions. The CAS probe that was fixed to one direction lost significant number of cloud droplets when the wind direction was out of wind iso axial conditions in comparison with the FSSP-100 and the CDP which were both placed on a rotating platform. We revealed that CAS and FSSP-100 had good agreement in deriving sizing parameters (effective diameter and median volume diameter from 5 to 35 µm) even though CAS was losing a significant amount of cloud droplets. The most sensitive derived parameter was liquid water content which was strongly connected to the wind direction and temperature.