Polarimetric radar observations, NWP output and crowd-sourced information for precipitation type identification in Belgium

The precipitation type (e.g. rain, snow, hail) is of great importance in many areas such as road and aviation safety, severe weather warnings, hydrology, and agriculture. The purpose of the present research at the Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium (RMI) is to combine the weather information from several sources in order to provide a comprehensive real-time product of the precipitation type at ground in Belgium. The preliminary results, based on observations from dual-polarization weather radars as well as on NWP model outputs, will be discussed. A comparison of these results with the crowd-sourced observations gathered through the RMI smartphone application will be shown and the perspectives for further developments will be presented.