Variability of rain profiles and its impact on microwave precipitation remote sensing as inferred from TRMM PR and TMI

Author

Liu, Guosheng ; Fu, Yunfei

Author_Institution

Dept. of Meteorol., Florida State Univ., Tallahassee, FL, USA

Volume

2

fYear

2001

fDate

2001

Firstpage

667

Abstract

This paper presents the characteristics of tropical rain profiles observed by the Precipitation Radar (PR) on TRMM satellite. Data for the entire year of 1998 were used in the analysis. The investigation focuses on the following questions: (1) given a surface rainfall rate, what are the typical rain profiles for different cloud and surface types? (2) Given the same surface rainfall rate, what is the variability of tropical rain profiles? How does it affect the microwave brightness temperatures? (3) How is the difference among rain profiles related to cloud development? The objectives of the study are both for better understanding the precipitation physics and for improving microwave remote sensing techniques

Keywords

atmospheric techniques; radiometry; rain; remote sensing by radar; spaceborne radar; AD 1998; Precipitation Radar data; TRMM PR data; TRMM TMI data; cloud types; microwave brightness temperatures; microwave precipitation remote sensing; microwave remote sensing; precipitation physics; rain profiles; surface types; tropical rain; Atmospheric measurements; Clouds; Meteorology; Microwave measurements; Oceans; Rain; Remote sensing; Satellite broadcasting; Sea surface; Spaceborne radar;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2001. IGARSS '01. IEEE 2001 International

Conference_Location

Sydney, NSW

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7031-7

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IGARSS.2001.976592

Filename

976592