Rainfall-induced changes in actual surface backscattering cross sections and effects on rain-rate estimates by spaceborne precipitation radar

Abstract

In this study, the authors used Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission precipitation radar (TRMM PR) data to investigate changes in the actual (attenuation corrected) surface backscattering cross section (σe0) due to changes in surface conditions induced by rainfall, the effects of changes in σe0 on the path integrated attenuation (PIA) estimates by surface reference techniques (SRTs), and the effects on rain-rate estimates by the TRMM PR standard rain-rate retrieval algorithm. Over land, σe0 is statistically higher under rainfall than under no rainfall conditions (soil moisture effect) unless the land surface is densely covered by vegetation. Over ocean, the dependence of σe0 on the incident angle differs under rainfall and no-rainfall conditions (wind speed effect). The alongtrack spatial reference (ATSR) method, one of the SRTs used in the standard algorithm, partially considers these effects, while the temporal reference (TR) method, another SRT, never involves these effects; its PIA estimates thus have negative biases over land. In the hybrid spatial reference (HSR) method used over ocean, different incident angles create different biases in PIA estimates. If the TR method is replaced by the ATSR method, the monthly rainfall amount in July 2001 all over the land within the TRMM coverage increases by 0.70%. The bias in the HSR method over ocean can be mitigated by fitting a σ0-θ curve separately to smaller incident angles and to larger incident angles. This improvement increases or decreases the monthly rainfall amounts in individual incident angle regions by up to 10%. © 2007 American Meteorological Society.