Articles | Volume 10, issue 6
https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-10-2009-2017
© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-10-2009-2017
© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Research article
| 
06 Jun 2017
Research article |
| 06 Jun 2017
Satellite-based high-resolution mapping of rainfall over southern Africa
Hanna Meyer
CORRESPONDING AUTHOR
Environmental Informatics, Faculty of Geography, Philipps-University Marburg, Deutschhausstr. 10, 35037 Marburg, Germany
Johannes Drönner
Database Research Group, Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics, Philipps-University Marburg, Hans-Meerwein-Str. 6, 35032 Marburg, Germany
Thomas Nauss
Environmental Informatics, Faculty of Geography, Philipps-University Marburg, Deutschhausstr. 10, 35037 Marburg, Germany
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Related subject area
Subject: Others (Wind, Precipitation, Temperature, etc.) | Technique: Remote Sensing | Topic: Data Processing and Information Retrieval
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Zhao Shi, Yuxiang Wen, and Jianxin He
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Elizabeth N. Smith and Jacob T. Carlin
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 17, 4087–4107, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-4087-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-4087-2024, 2024
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Lev D. Labzovskii, Gerd-Jan van Zadelhoff, David P. Donovan, Jos de Kloe, L. Gijsbert Tilstra, Ad Stoffelen, Damien Josset, and Piet Stammes
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The Atmospheric Laser Doppler Instrument (ALADIN) on the Aeolus satellite was the first of its kind to measure high-resolution vertical profiles of aerosols and cloud properties from space. We present an algorithm, producing Aeolus lidar surface returns (LSR) containing useful information for measuring UV reflectivity. Aeolus LSR matched well with existing UV reflectivity data from other satellites like GOME-2 and TROPOMI and demonstrated excellent sensitivity to modelled snow cover.
Laura Bianco, Bianca Adler, Ludovic Bariteau, Irina V. Djalalova, Timothy Myers, Sergio Pezoa, David D. Turner, and James M. Wilczak
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 17, 3933–3948, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-3933-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-3933-2024, 2024
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The Tropospheric Remotely Observed Profiling via Optimal Estimation physical retrieval is used to retrieve temperature and humidity profiles from various combinations of passive and active remote sensing instruments, surface platforms, and numerical weather prediction models. The retrieved profiles are assessed against collocated radiosonde in non-cloudy conditions to assess the sensitivity of the retrievals to different input combinations. Case studies with cloudy conditions are also inspected.
Björn Linder, Peter Preusse, Qiuyu Chen, Ole Martin Christensen, Lukas Krasauskas, Linda Megner, Manfred Ern, and Jörg Gumbel
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 17, 3829–3841, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-3829-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-3829-2024, 2024
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The Swedish research satellite MATS (Mesospheric Airglow/Aerosol Tomography and Spectroscopy) is designed to study atmospheric waves in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere. These waves perturb the temperature field, and thus, by observing three-dimensional temperature fluctuations, their properties can be quantified. This pre-study uses synthetic MATS data generated from a general circulation model to investigate how well wave properties can be retrieved.
Gia Huan Pham, Shu-Chih Yang, Chih-Chien Chang, Shu-Ya Chen, and Cheng Yung Huang
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 17, 3605–3623, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-3605-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-3605-2024, 2024
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This research examines the characteristics of low-level GNSS radio occultation (RO) refractivity bias over ocean and land and its dependency on the RO retrieval uncertainty, atmospheric temperature, and moisture. We propose methods for estimating the region-dependent refractivity bias. Our methods can be applied to calibrate the refractivity bias under different atmospheric conditions and thus improve the applications of the GNSS RO data in the deep troposphere.
Sanja Dmitrovic, Johnathan W. Hair, Brian L. Collister, Ewan Crosbie, Marta A. Fenn, Richard A. Ferrare, David B. Harper, Chris A. Hostetler, Yongxiang Hu, John A. Reagan, Claire E. Robinson, Shane T. Seaman, Taylor J. Shingler, Kenneth L. Thornhill, Holger Vömel, Xubin Zeng, and Armin Sorooshian
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 17, 3515–3532, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-3515-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-3515-2024, 2024
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This study introduces and evaluates a new ocean surface wind speed product from the NASA Langley Research Center (LARC) airborne High-Spectral-Resolution Lidar – Generation 2 (HSRL-2) during the NASA ACTIVATE mission. We show that HSRL-2 surface wind speed data are accurate when compared to ground-truth dropsonde measurements. Therefore, the HSRL-2 instrument is able obtain accurate, high-resolution surface wind speed data in airborne field campaigns.
Almudena Velázquez Blázquez, Carlos Domenech, Edward Baudrez, Nicolas Clerbaux, Carla Salas Molar, and Nils Madenach
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This paper focuses on the BMA-FLX processor, in which thermal and solar top-of-atmosphere radiative fluxes are obtained from longwave and shortwave radiances measured along-track by the EarthCARE Broadband Radiometer (BBR). The BBR measurements, at three fixed viewing angles (fore, nadir, aft) are co-registered either at the surface or at a reference level. A combined flux from the three BRR views is obtained. The algorithm has been successfully validated against test scenes.
Laura M. Tomkins, Sandra E. Yuter, and Matthew A. Miller
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 17, 3377–3399, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-3377-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-3377-2024, 2024
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We have created a new method to better identify enhanced features in radar data from winter storms. Unlike the clear-cut features seen in warm-season storms, features in winter storms are often fuzzier with softer edges. Our technique is unique because it uses two adaptive thresholds that change based on the background radar values. It can identify both strong and subtle features in the radar data and takes into account uncertainties in the detection process.
Eileen Päschke and Carola Detring
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 17, 3187–3217, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-3187-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-3187-2024, 2024
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Little noise in radial velocity Doppler lidar measurements can contribute to large errors in retrieved turbulence variables. In order to distinguish between plausible and erroneous measurements we developed new filter techniques that work independently of the choice of a specific threshold for the signal-to-noise ratio. The performance of these techniques is discussed both by means of assessing the filter results and by comparing retrieved turbulence variables versus independent measurements.
Lei Liu, Natalia Bliankinshtein, Yi Huang, John R. Gyakum, Philip M. Gabriel, Shiqi Xu, and Mengistu Wolde
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-1045, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-1045, 2024
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This study evaluates and compares a new microwave hyperspectrometer with an infrared hyperspectrometer for clear-sky temperature and water vapor retrievals. The analysis reveals that the information content of the infrared hyperspectrometer exceeds that of the microwave hyperspectrometer and provides higher vertical resolution in ground-based zenith measurements. Leveraging the ground-airborne synergy between the two instruments yielded optimal-sounding results.
Dong L. Wu, Valery A. Yudin, Kyu-Myong Kim, Mohar Chattopadhyay, Lawrence Coy, Ruth S. Lieberman, C. C. Jude H. Salinas, Jae H. Lee, Jie Gong, and Guiping Liu
Atmos. Meas. Tech. Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-2024-51, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-2024-51, 2024
Revised manuscript accepted for AMT
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Radio occultation (RO) observations play an important role in monitoring climate changes and numerical weather forecasts. The residual ionospheric error (RIE) in RO measurements is critical to accurately retrieve atmospheric temperature and refractivity. This study shows that RIF impacts on temperature analysis are mainly confined to the polar stratosphere with amplitude of 1–4 K. These results further highlight the need for RO RIE correction in the modern data assimilation systems.
Luuk D. van der Valk, Miriam Coenders-Gerrits, Rolf W. Hut, Aart Overeem, Bas Walraven, and Remko Uijlenhoet
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 17, 2811–2832, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-2811-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-2811-2024, 2024
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Microwave links, often part of mobile phone networks, can be used to measure rainfall along the link path by determining the signal loss caused by rainfall. We use high-frequency data of multiple microwave links to recreate commonly used sampling strategies. For time intervals up to 1 min, the influence of sampling strategies on estimated rainfall intensities is relatively little, while for intervals longer than 5–15 min, the sampling strategy can have significant influences on the estimates.
Martin Lainer, Killian P. Brennan, Alessandro Hering, Jérôme Kopp, Samuel Monhart, Daniel Wolfensberger, and Urs Germann
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 17, 2539–2557, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-2539-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-2539-2024, 2024
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This study uses deep learning (the Mask R-CNN model) on drone-based photogrammetric data of hail on the ground to estimate hail size distributions (HSDs). Traditional hail sensors' limited areas complicate the full HSD retrieval. The HSD of a supercell event on 20 June 2021 is retrieved and contains > 18 000 hailstones. The HSD is compared to automatic hail sensor measurements and those of weather-radar-based MESHS. Investigations into ground hail melting are performed by five drone flights.
Andreas Foth, Moritz Lochmann, Pablo Saavedra Garfias, and Heike Kalesse-Los
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-919, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-919, 2024
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Microwave radiometers are usually not able to provide atmospheric quantities such as temperature profiles during rain. Here, we present a method based on a selection of specific frequencies and elevation angles from the microwave radiometer observation. A comparison with a numerical weather prediction model shows that the presented method allows to resolve temperature profiles during rain with rain rates up to 2 mm h−1 which was not possible before with state-of-the-art retrievals.
Andrea Camplani, Daniele Casella, Paolo Sanò, and Giulia Panegrossi
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 17, 2195–2217, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-2195-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-2195-2024, 2024
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The paper describes a new machine-learning-based snowfall retrieval algorithm for Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder observations developed to retrieve high-latitude snowfall events. The main novelty of the approach is the radiometric characterization of the background surface at the time of the overpass, which is ancillary to the retrieval process. The algorithm shows a unique capability to retrieve snowfall in the environmental conditions typical of high latitudes.
Lusheng Liang, Wenying Su, Sergio Sejas, Zachary Eitzen, and Norman G. Loeb
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 17, 2147–2163, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-2147-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-2147-2024, 2024
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This paper describes an updated process to obtain unfiltered radiation from CERES satellite instruments by incorporating the most recent developments in radiative transfer modeling and ancillary input datasets (e.g., realistic representation of land surface radiation and climatology of surface temperatures and aerosols) during the past 20 years. The resulting global mean of instantaneous SW and LW fluxes is changed by less than 0.5 W m−2 with regional differences as large as 2.0 W m−2.
Maximilian Graf, Andreas Wagner, Julius Polz, Llorenç Lliso, José Alberto Lahuerta, Harald Kunstmann, and Christian Chwala
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 17, 2165–2182, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-2165-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-2165-2024, 2024
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Commercial microwave links (CMLs) can be used for rainfall retrieval. The detection of rainy periods in their attenuation time series is a crucial processing step. We investigate the usage of rainfall data from MSG SEVIRI for this task, compare this approach with existing methods, and introduce a novel combined approach. The results show certain advantages for SEVIRI-based methods, particularly for CMLs where existing methods perform poorly. Our novel combination yields the best performance.
Lieuwe G. Tilstra, Martin de Graaf, Victor J. H. Trees, Pavel Litvinov, Oleg Dubovik, and Piet Stammes
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 17, 2235–2256, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-2235-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-2235-2024, 2024
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This paper introduces a new surface albedo climatology of directionally dependent Lambertian-equivalent reflectivity (DLER) observed by TROPOMI on the Sentinel-5 Precursor satellite. The database contains monthly fields of DLER for 21 wavelength bands at a relatively high spatial resolution of 0.125 by 0.125 degrees. The anisotropy of the surface reflection is handled by parameterisation of the viewing angle dependence.
Bing Cao and Alan Z. Liu
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 17, 2123–2146, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-2123-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-2123-2024, 2024
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A narrow-band sodium lidar measures atmospheric waves but is limited to vertical variations. We propose to utilize phase shifts among observations from different laser beams to derive horizontal wave information. Two gravity wave packets were identified by this method. Both waves were found to interact with thin evanescent layers, partially reflected, but transmitted energy to higher altitudes. The method can detect more medium-frequency gravity waves for similar lidar systems worldwide.
Thomas Hocking, Thorsten Mauritsen, and Linda Megner
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-356, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-356, 2024
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The imbalance between the energy the Earth absorbs from the Sun and the energy the Earth emits back to space gives rise to climate change, but measuring the small imbalance is challenging. We simulate satellites in various orbits to investigate how well they sample the imbalance, and find that the best option is to combine at least two satellites that see complementary parts of the Earth and cover the daily and annual cycles. This information is useful when planning future satellite missions.
Xiaozhen Xiong, Xu Liu, Robert Spurr, Ming Zhao, Qiguang Yang, Wan Wu, and Liqiao Lei
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 17, 1965–1978, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-1965-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-1965-2024, 2024
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The term “hotspot” refers to the sharp increase in reflectance occurring when incident (solar) and reflected (viewing) directions coincide in the backscatter direction. The accurate simulation of hotspot directional signatures is important for many remote sensing applications, but current models typically require large values of computations to represent the hotspot accurately. This paper provides a numerically improved hotspot BRDF model that converges much faster and is used in VLIDORT.
Daniel Zawada, Kimberlee Dubé, Taran Warnock, Adam Bourassa, Susann Tegtmeier, and Douglas Degenstein
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 17, 1995–2010, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-1995-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-1995-2024, 2024
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There remain large uncertainties in long-term changes of stratospheric–atmospheric temperatures. We have produced a time series of more than 20 years of satellite-based temperature measurements from the OSIRIS instrument in the upper–middle stratosphere. The dataset is publicly available and intended to be used for a better understanding of changes in stratospheric temperatures.
Natalie E. Theeuwes, Janet F. Barlow, Antti Mannisenaho, Denise Hertwig, Ewan O'Connor, and Alan Robins
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-937, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-937, 2024
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A doppler lidar was placed in highly built-up area in London to measure wakes from tall buildings during a period of one year. We were able to detect wakes and assess their dependence on wind speed, wind direction, and atmospheric stability.
Alban Philibert, Marie Lothon, Julien Amestoy, Pierre-Yves Meslin, Solène Derrien, Yannick Bezombes, Bernard Campistron, Fabienne Lohou, Antoine Vial, Guylaine Canut-Rocafort, Joachim Reuder, and Jennifer K. Brooke
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 17, 1679–1701, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-1679-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-1679-2024, 2024
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We present a new algorithm, CALOTRITON, for the retrieval of the convective boundary layer depth with ultra-high-frequency radar measurements. CALOTRITON is partly based on the principle that the top of the convective boundary layer is associated with an inversion and a decrease in turbulence. It is evaluated using ceilometer and radiosonde data. It is able to qualify the complexity of the vertical structure of the low troposphere and detect internal or residual layers.
Kamil Mroz, Alessandro Battaglia, and Ann M. Fridlind
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 17, 1577–1597, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-1577-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-1577-2024, 2024
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In this study, we examine the extent to which radar measurements from space can inform us about the properties of clouds and precipitation. Surprisingly, our analysis showed that the amount of ice turning into rain was lower than expected in the current product. To improve on this, we came up with a new way to extract information about the size and concentration of particles from radar data. As long as we use this method in the right conditions, we can even estimate how dense the ice is.
Volker Wulfmeyer, Christoph Senff, Florian Späth, Andreas Behrendt, Diego Lange, Robert M. Banta, W. Alan Brewer, Andreas Wieser, and David D. Turner
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 17, 1175–1196, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-1175-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-1175-2024, 2024
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A simultaneous deployment of Doppler, temperature, and water-vapor lidar systems is used to provide profiles of molecular destruction rates and turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) dissipation in the convective boundary layer (CBL). The results can be used for the parameterization of turbulent variables, TKE budget analyses, and the verification of weather forecast and climate models.
Daisuke Hotta, Katrin Lonitz, and Sean Healy
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 17, 1075–1089, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-1075-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-1075-2024, 2024
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Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) polarimetric radio occultation (PRO) is a new type of GNSS observations that can detect heavy precipitation along the ray path between the emitter and receiver satellites. As a first step towards using these observations in numerical weather prediction (NWP), we developed a computer code that simulates GNSS-PRO observations from forecast fields produced by an NWP model. The quality of the developed simulator is evaluated with a number of case studies.
Mohamed Mossad, Irina Strelnikova, Robin Wing, and Gerd Baumgarten
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 17, 783–799, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-783-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-783-2024, 2024
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This numerical study addresses observational gaps' impact on atmospheric gravity wave spectra. Three methods, fast Fourier transform (FFT), generalized Lomb–Scargle periodogram (GLS), and Haar structure function (HSF), were tested on synthetic data. HSF is best for spectra with negative slopes. GLS excels for flat and positive slopes and identifying dominant frequencies. Accurately estimating these aspects is crucial for understanding gravity wave dynamics and energy transfer in the atmosphere.
Kuo-Nung Wang, Chi O. Ao, Mary G. Morris, George A. Hajj, Marcin J. Kurowski, Francis J. Turk, and Angelyn W. Moore
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 17, 583–599, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-583-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-583-2024, 2024
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In this article, we described a joint retrieval approach combining two techniques, RO and MWR, to obtain high vertical resolution and solve for temperature and moisture independently. The results show that the complicated structure in the lower troposphere can be better resolved with much smaller biases, and the RO+MWR combination is the most stable scenario in our sensitivity analysis. This approach is also applied to real data (COSMIC-2/Suomi-NPP) to show the promise of joint RO+MWR retrieval.
Filippo Emilio Scarsi, Alessandro Battaglia, Frederic Tridon, Paolo Martire, Ranvir Dhillon, and Anthony Illingworth
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 17, 499–514, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-499-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-499-2024, 2024
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The WIVERN mission, one of the two candidates to be the ESA's Earth Explorer 11 mission, aims at providing measurements of horizontal winds in cloud and precipitation systems through a conically scanning W-band Doppler radar. This work discusses four methods that can be used to characterize and correct the Doppler velocity error induced by the antenna mispointing. The proposed methodologies can be extended to other Doppler concepts featuring conically scanning or slant viewing Doppler systems.
Luis Ackermann, Joshua Soderholm, Alain Protat, Rhys Whitley, Lisa Ye, and Nina Ridder
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 17, 407–422, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-407-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-407-2024, 2024
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The paper addresses the crucial topic of hail damage quantification using radar observations. We propose a new radar-derived hail product that utilizes a large dataset of insurance hail damage claims and radar observations. A deep neural network was employed, trained with local meteorological variables and the radar observations, to better quantify hail damage. Key meteorological variables were identified to have the most predictive capability in this regard.
Christos Gatidis, Marc Schleiss, and Christine Unal
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 17, 235–245, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-235-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-235-2024, 2024
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A common method to retrieve important information about the microphysical structure of rain (DSD retrievals) requires a constrained relationship between the drop size distribution parameters. The most widely accepted empirical relationship is between μ and Λ. The relationship shows variability across the different types of rainfall (convective or stratiform). The new proposed power-law model to represent the μ–Λ relation provides a better physical interpretation of the relationship coefficients.
Cited articles
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Benas, N., Finkensieper, S., Stengel, M., van Zadelhoff, G.-J., Hanschmann, T., Hollmann, R., and Meirink, J. F.: The MSG-SEVIRI based cloud property data record CLAAS-2, Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2017-9, in review, 2017.
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Finkensieper, S., Meirink, J.-F., van Zadelhoff, G.-J., Hanschmann, T., Benas, N., Stengel, M., Fuchs, P., Hollmann, R., and Werscheck, M.: CLAAS-2: CM SAF CLoud property dAtAset using SEVIRI – Edn. 2, Tech. rep., Satellite Application Facility on Climate Monitoring, 2016.
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Short summary
A spatially explicit mapping of rainfall is required for southern Africa but obtaining accurate estimates is still a challenging task. We estimated hourly rainfall based on optical satellite data and neural networks. The results indicated that the majority of rainfall events could be captured by the model, but with a clear tendency to overestimate rainfall. Despite being a comparably simple approach, the presented rainfall retrieval could outperform a complex global rainfall product.
A spatially explicit mapping of rainfall is required for southern Africa but obtaining accurate...
