Validation concepts with ground radars for global precipitation mission during the post launch era

The GPM core satellite will be ready to launch in February 2014, less than 7 months after the end of IGARSS2013 symposium. In the pre-launch era, several international validation experiments such as LPVEX (Light Precipitation Validation Experiment), MC3E (Midlatitude Continental Convective Clouds Experiment), and IFloodS (Iowa Flood Studies) have already generated a substantial set of measurements that continue to contribute to the development and test of pre-launch GPM algorithms. Following launch, it is expected that GPM ground validation will focus on evaluating precipitation data products, generated by a constellation of GPM satellites as well as assumptions made in algorithms. This paper presents simple concepts of dual-polarization radar observation strategies and products that can be generated for the post launch era of the GPM program, especially when there are satellite overpasses. The use of microphysical retrievals from ground-based radars and in-situ observations for validating the retrievals from space based observations is the main focus of this paper.