Database of the Italian disdrometer network (V02)

The database includes 1-minute records of Drop Size Distribution (DSD) collected by the disdrometer network along the Italian peninsula. The disdrometers belong to seven Italian institutions that in 2021 decided to bring together their know-how, experience, and instruments for measuring DSDs giving birth to the Italian Group of Disdrometry (in Italian it reads: Gruppo Italiano Disdrometria, GID, https://www.gid-net.it/). The database covers a period of 9 years (from 2012 to 2021) although not all the disdrometers have measurements for the whole period. In order to obtain uniform and high quality DSD, the same processing has been adopted to all the disdrometer raw data.

The processing along with the characteristics of the Italian disdrometer network and of the relative DSD database have been presented in the data paper "Database of the Italian disdrometer network" pubbliched on June 2023 in the Journal "Earth System Science Data" (DOI: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-2417-2023). 

The DSDs of the database have been obtained following the V02 of the GID processing. DSDs obtained with V01 of the GID processing are available here https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6875801 (Adirosi et al., 2022). The difference among the two version of the GID processing is the diameter-fall velocity relation considered for the DSD computation. Version 01 of the GID algorithm uses the Atlas et al. (1973; Rev. Geophys.) fall velocity at sea level for all the GID sites, while V02 modified the terminal fall velocity relation to take into account the lower air density at the altitude of the disdrometer installation site. It should be noted that most of the GID disdrometers are located at low altitudes (h < 400 m above sea level) where the differences between the fall velocity at sea level and the one at site height can be considered negligible (i.e., less than 2%).  

Most of the data have been also used for a validation study of the precipitation products of the Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR) aboard the Core Satellite of the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission. The results of the validation study are reported in the paper "Validation of GPM Rainfall and Drop Size Distribution Products through Disdrometers in Italy" published on May 2021 in the Journal "Remote Sensing" (DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13112081).