Browse

You are looking at 11 - 16 of 16 items for :

  • Precipitation Retrieval Algorithms for GPM x
  • Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology x
  • Refine by Access: All Content x
Clear All
Tomoaki Mega
and
Shoichi Shige

Abstract

The rain/no-rain classification for the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Microwave Imager (TMI) fails to detect rain over coasts, where the microwave footprint encompasses a mixture of radiometrically cold ocean and radiometrically warm land. A static land–ocean–coast mask is used to determine the surface type of each satellite footprint. The coast mask is conservatively wide to account for the largest footprints, preventing use of the more appropriate ocean or land algorithm for coastal regions.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a classification whereby the smallest region possible is defined as coast. In this endeavor, two major improvements are applied to the land–ocean–coast classification. First, the surface classification based on microwave footprints of the high frequency actually used in rain detection is employed. Second, the footprint area of the surface classification is established using an effective field-of-view size and scan geometry of the TMI. These improvements are applied to the Global Satellite Mapping of Precipitation TMI algorithm. The classification result is validated using the TRMM precipitation radar. The validation shows that these improvements lead to better rain detection in the coastal region.

Full access
Atsushi Hamada
and
Yukari N. Takayabu

Abstract

This paper demonstrates the impact of the enhancement in detectability by the dual-frequency precipitation radar (DPR) on board the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) core observatory. By setting two minimum detectable reflectivities—12 and 18 dBZ—artificially to 6 months of GPM DPR measurements, the precipitation occurrence and volume increase by ~21.1% and ~1.9%, respectively, between 40°S and 40°N.

GPM DPR is found to be able to detect light precipitation, which mainly consists of two distinct types. One type is shallow precipitation, which is most significant for convective precipitation over eastern parts of subtropical oceans, where deep convection is typically suppressed. The other type is probably associated with lower parts of anvil clouds associated with organized precipitation systems.

While these echoes have lower reflectivities than the official value of the minimum detectable reflectivity, they are found to mostly consist of true precipitation signals, suggesting that the official value may be too conservative for some sort of meteorological analyses. These results are expected to further the understanding of both global energy and water budgets and the diabatic heating distribution.

Full access
S. Joseph Munchak
,
Robert Meneghini
,
Mircea Grecu
, and
William S. Olson

Abstract

The Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Microwave Imager (GMI) and dual-frequency precipitation radar (DPR) are designed to provide the most accurate instantaneous precipitation estimates currently available from space. The GPM Combined Radar–Radiometer Algorithm (CORRA) plays a key role in this process by retrieving precipitation profiles that are consistent with GMI and DPR measurements; therefore, it is desirable that the forward models in CORRA use the same geophysical input parameters. This study explores the feasibility of using internally consistent emissivity and surface backscatter cross-sectional ( ) models for water surfaces in CORRA. An empirical model for DPR Ku- and Ka-band as a function of 10-m wind speed and incidence angle is derived from GMI-only wind retrievals under clear-sky conditions. This allows for the measurements, which are also influenced by path-integrated attenuation (PIA) from precipitation, to be used as input to CORRA and for wind speed to be retrieved as output. Comparisons to buoy data give a wind rmse of 3.7 m s−1 for Ku+GMI retrievals and 3.2 m s−1 for Ku+Ka+GMI retrievals under precipitation (compared to 1.3 m s−1 for clear-sky GMI-only retrievals), and there is a reduction in bias from the global analysis (GANAL) background data (−10%) to the Ku+GMI (−3%) and Ku+Ka+GMI (−5%) retrievals. Ku+GMI retrievals of precipitation increase slightly in light (<1 mm h–1) and decrease in moderate to heavy precipitation (>1 mm h−1). The Ku+Ka+GMI retrievals, being additionally constrained by the Ka reflectivity, increase only slightly in moderate and heavy precipitation at low wind speeds (<5 m s−1) relative to retrievals using the surface reference estimate of PIA as input.

Full access
Christian D. Kummerow
,
David L. Randel
,
Mark Kulie
,
Nai-Yu Wang
,
Ralph Ferraro
,
S. Joseph Munchak
, and
Veljko Petkovic

Abstract

The Goddard profiling algorithm has evolved from a pseudoparametric algorithm used in the current TRMM operational product (GPROF 2010) to a fully parametric approach used operationally in the GPM era (GPROF 2014). The fully parametric approach uses a Bayesian inversion for all surface types. The algorithm thus abandons rainfall screening procedures and instead uses the full brightness temperature vector to obtain the most likely precipitation state. This paper offers a complete description of the GPROF 2010 and GPROF 2014 algorithms and assesses the sensitivity of the algorithm to assumptions related to channel uncertainty as well as ancillary data. Uncertainties in precipitation are generally less than 1%–2% for realistic assumptions in channel uncertainties. Consistency among different radiometers is extremely good over oceans. Consistency over land is also good if the diurnal cycle is accounted for by sampling GMI product only at the time of day that different sensors operate. While accounting for only a modest amount of the total precipitation, snow-covered surfaces exhibit differences of up to 25% between sensors traceable to the availability of high-frequency (166 and 183 GHz) channels. In general, comparisons against early versions of GPM’s Ku-band radar precipitation estimates are fairly consistent but absolute differences will be more carefully evaluated once GPROF 2014 is upgraded to use the full GPM-combined radar–radiometer product for its a priori database. The combined algorithm represents a physically constructed database that is consistent with both the GPM radars and the GMI observations, and thus it is the ideal basis for a Bayesian approach that can be extended to an arbitrary passive microwave sensor.

Full access
Robert Meneghini
,
Hyokyung Kim
,
Liang Liao
,
Jeffrey A. Jones
, and
John M. Kwiatkowski

Abstract

It has long been recognized that path-integrated attenuation (PIA) can be used to improve precipitation estimates from high-frequency weather radar data. One approach that provides an estimate of this quantity from airborne or spaceborne radar data is the surface reference technique (SRT), which uses measurements of the surface cross section in the presence and absence of precipitation. Measurements from the dual-frequency precipitation radar (DPR) on the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) satellite afford the first opportunity to test the method for spaceborne radar data at Ka band as well as for the Ku-band–Ka-band combination.

The study begins by reviewing the basis of the single- and dual-frequency SRT. As the performance of the method is closely tied to the behavior of the normalized radar cross section (NRCS or σ0) of the surface, the statistics of σ0 derived from DPR measurements are given as a function of incidence angle and frequency for ocean and land backgrounds over a 1-month period. Several independent estimates of the PIA, formed by means of different surface reference datasets, can be used to test the consistency of the method since, in the absence of error, the estimates should be identical. Along with theoretical considerations, the comparisons provide an initial assessment of the performance of the single- and dual-frequency SRT for the DPR. The study finds that the dual-frequency SRT can provide improvement in the accuracy of path attenuation estimates relative to the single-frequency method, particularly at Ku band.

Full access
Shinta Seto
and
Toshio Iguchi

Abstract

A new attenuation correction method has been developed for the dual-frequency precipitation radar (DPR) on the core satellite of the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission. The new method is based on Hitschfeld and Bordan’s attenuation correction method (HB method), but the relationship between the specific attenuation k and the effective radar reflectivity factor Z e (kZ e relationship) is modified by using the dual-frequency ratio (DFR) of Z e and the surface reference technique (SRT). Therefore, the new method is called the HB-DFR-SRT method (H-D-S method). The previous attenuation correction method, called the HB-DFR method (H-D method), results in an underestimation of precipitation rates for heavy precipitation, but the H-D-S method mitigates the negative bias by means of the SRT. When only a single-frequency measurement is available, the H-D-S method is identical to the HB-SRT method (H-S method).

The attenuation correction methods were tested with a simple synthetic DPR dataset. As long as the SRT gives perfect estimates of path-integrated attenuation and the adjustment factor of the kZ e relationship (denoted by ε) is vertically constant, the H-S method is much better than the dual-frequency methods. Tests with SRT error and vertical variation in ε showed that the H-D method was better than the H-S method for weak precipitation, whereas the H-S method was better than the H-D method for heavy precipitation. The H-D-S method did not produce the best results for both weak and heavy precipitation, but the results are stable. Quantitative evaluation should be done with real DPR measurement datasets.

Full access