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. Precipitation over Antarctica is the main term in the surface massbalance of the Antarctic ice sheet, which is crucial for the future evolutionof the sea level worldwide. Precipitation, however, remains poorly documentedand understood mainly because of a lack of observations in this extremeenvironment. Two observatories dedicated to precipitation have been set up atthe Belgian station Princess Elisabeth (PE) and at the French station Dumontd'Urville (DDU) in East Antarctica. Among other instruments, both siteshave a vertically pointing micro rain radar (MRR) working at the K band.Measurements have been continuously collected at DDU since the austral summerof2015–2016, while they have been collected mostly during summer seasons at PEsince 2010, with a full year of observation during 2012. In this study, thestatistics of the vertical profiles of reflectivity, vertical velocity, andspectral width are analyzed for all seasons. Vertical profiles were separatedinto surface precipitation and virga to evaluate the impact of virga on thestructure of the vertical profiles. The climatology of the study area playsan important role in the structure of the precipitation: warmer and moisteratmospheric conditions at DDU favor the occurrence of more intenseprecipitation compared with PE, with a difference of 8 dBZ between bothstations. The strong katabatic winds blowing at DDU induce a decrease inreflectivity close to the ground due to the sublimation of the snowfallparticles. The vertical profiles of precipitation velocity show significantdifferences between the two stations. In general, at DDU the verticalvelocity increases as the height decreases, while at PE the vertical velocitydecreases as the height decreases. These features of the vertical profiles ofreflectivity and vertical velocity could be explained by the more frequentoccurrence of aggregation and riming at DDU compared to PE because of thelower temperature and relative humidity at the latter, located further in theinterior. Robust and reliable statistics about the vertical profile ofprecipitation in Antarctica, as derived from MRRs for instance,are necessary and valuable for the evaluation of precipitation estimatesderived from satellite measurements and from numerical atmospheric models.

The vertical structure of precipitation at two stations in East Antarctica derived from micro rain radars