In-line holography of cloud volumes applied to the measurement of raindrops and snowflakes

Abstract The ground-based HODAR (HOlographic Droplet and Aerosol Recording) of the University of Mainz has been operational since 1989 on the Kleiner Feldberg Mountain Observatory near Frankfurt/Main, Germany, in a `small volume' configuration. With this setup an air volume of approximately 1 l can be in situ recorded, which allows it to image all aerosol particles and droplets with diameter larger than 6 μm contained in the sample volume in situ. Recently the beam diameter and optical path length of the inline system have been enlarged such that large cloud volumes (approximately 500 l) can be recorded on single holograms. During the holographic image reconstruction step in the laboratory,…