Towards variational retrieval of warm rain from passive microwave observations

Duncan, David Ian; Kummerow, Christian D.; Dolan, Brenda; Petković, Veljko

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-11-4389-2018

Articles | Volume 11, issue 7

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-11-4389-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-11-4389-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 11, issue 7

Research article

|

25 Jul 2018

Research article |

| 25 Jul 2018

Towards variational retrieval of warm rain from passive microwave observations

David Ian Duncan, Christian D. Kummerow, Brenda Dolan, and Veljko Petković

Model code and software

CSU 1DVAR - GMI Warm Rain Retrieval D. I. Duncan https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1098212

Short summary

Satellites are fairly good at detecting and quantifying rainfall over oceans, but the light rainfall characteristic of high latitudes and stratocumulus areas is harder to sense for passive sensors. The method presented extends the sensitivity of passive measurements to light rain by leveraging radar data and measurements of raindrop distributions. This method may help to close the gap between global precipitation estimates at high latitudes and maximize the utility of passive sensors.