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A new method for the physical retrieval of rain rates from satellite microwave radiometers is presented and compared to two other rainfall climatologies derived from satellites. The method is part of a unified ocean parameter retrieval algorithm that is based on the fundamental principles of radiative transfer. The algorithm simultaneously finds near-surface wind speed W, columnar water vapor V, columnar cloud liquid water L, rain rate R, and effective radiating temperature T U for the upwelling radiation. The performance of the algorithm in the absence of rain is discussed in Wentz [1995], and this paper focuses on the rain component of the algorithm.

Two deep-layer tropospheric temperature products, one for the lower troposphere (T 2LT) and one for the midtroposphere (T 2 , which includes some stratospheric emissions), are based on the observations of channel 2 of the microwave sounding unit on National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) polar-orbiting satellites. Revisions to version C of these datasets have been explicitly applied to account for the effects of orbit decay (loss of satellite altitude) and orbit drift (east-west movement). Orbit decay introduces an artificial cooling in T 2LT , while the effects of orbit drift introduce artificial warming in both T 2LT and T 2. The key issues for orbit drift are 1) accounting for the diurnal cycle and 2) the adjustment needed to correct for spurious effects related to the temperature of the instrument. In addition, new calibration coefficients for NOAA-12 have been applied. The net global effect of these revisions (version D) is small, having little impact on the year-to-year anomalies. The change in global trends from C to D for 1979-98 for T 2LT is an increase from ϩ0.03 to ϩ0.06 K decade Ϫ1 , and a decrease for T 2 from ϩ0.08 to ϩ0.04 K decade Ϫ1 .

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