Adjusting ground radar using space TRMM Precipitation Radar

Abstract

Radar is an excellent tool to get a qualitative overview on the weather situation. Meteorological radars are the best sensors for providing precipitation observations over both land and sea areas. The surveillance area consists of several tens of thousands of square kilometers; the spatial resolution is of the order of several cubic kilometers; the temporal resolution can be as good as 5 min, or even less. When aiming at applying radar data in a quantitative way, we see three important tasks to be carefully dealt with: (1) monitoring the stability of the hardware and reproducibility of the measurements; (2) taking care of the internal instrumental checking of the sensor (calibration); (3) transforming radar observations into the physical/meteorological variable of interest: for instance, transforming radar reflectivities aloft (somewhere high up in the sky) into rainfall intensity at ground level (adjustment).