Errors in surface rainfall rates retrieved from radar due to wind-drift

Abstract

This article describes a series of experiments based on real data wherein the advection of the precipitation below the radar-sampled volume is estimated using Doppler radar determined wind fields. The experiments show that even at standard resolutions of 2 km the error can be extensive, and at higher resolutions and greater ranges (higher beam elevations) the errors become very large. Errors are assessed using different Z-R relationships and resolutions as high as 0.5 km. Copyright © 2005 Royal Meteorological Society.