Potential Role of Dual-Polarization Radar in the Validation of Satellite Precipitation Measurements

Abstract

Reliable global quantitative precipitation measurement is critically important for a variety of applications, including flood forecasting, numerical weather prediction, understanding the evolution of hurricanes and severe storms, and tracking of long-term trends in global precipitation and water supply. When combined with comprehensive ground validation and calibration, satellite observations offer practical prospects for acquiring accurate and global datasets especially over oceans and remote regions. Since the advent of satellite sensing of clouds and precipitation there has been much progress in terms of instrumentation and algorithm development. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), launched in 1997, represents an advanced active and passive remote sensing system to measure precipitation. Each precipitation satellite mission requires thorough ground validation to test instrument and algorithm performance. With the success of the TRMM and the plans for TRMM's successor mission, the Global Precipitation Measurement mission (GPM), the current era represents •

A Climatology of Disdrometer Measurements of Rainfall in Finland over Five Years with Implications for Global Radar Observations

“…The low total drop count does introduce some sampling errors into the moment estimates, but the deterioration is expected to be minor because in a large dataset the errors are effectively averaged out; therefore we decided to emphasize the completeness of the climatological sample over some statistical accuracy. For more detailed studies on the influence of sampling, see, for example, Joss and Waldvogel (1969), Chandrasekar and Bringi (1987), Smith and Kliche (2005), and Moisseev and Chandrasekar (2007).…”

“…The qualitative implication of these findings for GPM ground validation is that the performance of the groundbased radar network can be expected to exceed that of the satellite in most cases, thus providing a tool to evaluate the satellite retrieval algorithms also at high latitudes [for a general overview of the subject, see Chandrasekar et al (2008)]. Put more precisely, the ground-based observations are able to provide a reference measurement for all cases in which GPM is able to detect a signal, especially since the smaller radar bin size of the ground radars permits the use of spatial averaging.…”

Quality Control and Calibration of the Dual-Polarization Radar at Kwajalein, RMI

“…2005, among others); all of which benefit research focusing on ground validation of satellite measurements (Chandrasekar et al 2008). Kwajalein, Republic of the Marshall Islands (KWAJ) (Figure 1) is an ideal tropical oceanic location for which ground validation, modeling, mesoscale characterization studies, and other activities have focused (Schumacher and Houze 2000, Sobel et al 2004, Houze et al 2004, Wolff et al 2005, Yuter et al 2005, Blossey et al 2007).…”

Evaluation of GPROF-SSMI/S rainfall estimates over land during the Brazilian CHUVA-VALE campaign

“…Typically the comparisons are made using rain gauges (e.g., Vila et al, 2009;Puca et al, 2014). However, studies using other data sources have been widely used, e.g., active microwaves (Aonashi et al 2009), dual polarization weather radars (e.g., Liao et al, 2001;Chandrasekar et al, 2008;Cimini et al, 2013), disdrometers (Morales et al, 2013), among others. Extensive information on actual, ongoing and future activities/plans regarding precipitation measurement (observational, modeling and from satellites) and its performance and applications are given by Michaelides et al (2009), Levizzani et al (2007), Kidd andLevizzani (2011), Tapiador et al (2012) and Kucera et al (2013).…”