Precipitation type determination from spaceborne radar observations

The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) program is dedicated to observing and understanding the impact of tropical rainfall. Two important products of the TRMM precipitation radar include the classification of precipitation into convective and stratiform type as well as determination of the height of the brightband. Currently, TRMM uses an algorithm to arrive at these products based on a characterization of horizontal and vertical variability of reflectivity. This paper presents a new algorithm for classifying precipitation type into convective or stratiform as well as detect the height of brightband developed using wavelet analysis. The results obtained from wavelet analysis are compared against simultaneous ground validation products from the TRMM program. The results show that the wavelet-based algorithms provide fairly accurate results for both convective/stratiform classification as well as brightband determination.