Rainfall observation with high resolution using Ku-band broad band radar

A new high resolution Doppler radar, the Ku-band broad band radar, with scanning capability for meteorological application has been developed. Due to the new system design, the BBR can accurately measure the radar reflectivity factor with the range resolution of 5 m and the time resolution of 1 min per 1 volume scan from the nearest range of 50 m to 15 km for 10 W power using pulse compression. In this paper, the brief description of the BBR and the initial observation results are shown. In the calibration, reflectivity factor of the BBR is fairly good agreement with the Joss-Waldvogel disdrometer. In the volume scanning observation, we succeeded to detect fine 3 dimensional structures of precipitation.