Classification of precipitation and volcanic clouds using operational X-band polarimetric radar parameters

Explosive volcanic eruptions are severe natural phenomena that produce pyroclastic materials, eruption columns, and volcanic ash clouds. During moist weather conditions, volcanic eruption products can be coated with water, resulting in wet ash and/or mixtures of ash and rain. Wet ash, which is heavier than dry ash increases the risk of towers and poles collapsing, and rain mixed with volcanic ash is a harmful natural phenomenon that threatens human life, infrastructures, economies, agriculture, etc. Optical measurements, which are made with ground-based instruments (ex, two-dimensional video disdrometer (2DVD), parsivel, etc.), cameras, and satellites, are limited in their ability to detect volcanic ash clouds and eruption columns in cloudy or precipitation conditions. Weather radar is one of the key instruments for studying and monitoring both precipitation and volcanic ash clouds, since it can observe both types of system and can provide valuable information that can discriminate between the two systems through the use of polarimetric parameters. In this paper, our goal is to find characteristic of polarimetric parameters for volcanic ash clouds and precipitation using observed radar data, and to make a classification algorithm for discriminating two systems.