Precipitation profiling using single-frequency radar and multi-frequency radiometer data obtained from an aircraft experiment

A new technique of precipitation profiling for spaceborne radar measurements using both radar and radiometer is proposed. This approach is an extension of the radar profiling method proposed so far in which the rain drop size distribution is determined. The brightness temperature obtained from radiometer measurement is used instead of sea surface attenuation in this approach. One of advantages of this method is that the multi-layered precipitation profile, each layer of which is assumed to consist of, such as, snow, melting and rain particles, can be handled by using multi-frequency radiometer data. After describing the procedure of the method, sensitivity and independency of the parameters to be estimated are tested using stratified precipitation model