Determination of low-level temperature profiles from microwave radiometer observations during rain

Foth, Andreas; Lochmann, Moritz; Saavedra Garfias, Pablo; Kalesse-Los, Heike

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-7169-2024

Articles | Volume 17, issue 24

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-7169-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-7169-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 17, issue 24

Research article

|

20 Dec 2024

Research article |

| 20 Dec 2024

Determination of low-level temperature profiles from microwave radiometer observations during rain

Andreas Foth, Moritz Lochmann, Pablo Saavedra Garfias, and Heike Kalesse-Los

Data sets

Brightness Temperature Data and Weather Station Data from General Scans of the Microwave Radiometer HATPRO Andreas Foth https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13692454

ERA5 Hourly Data on Pressure Levels from 1940 to Present H. Hersbach et al. https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.6860a573

Custom collection of Mwr Level 1c Data from Lindenberg between 16 Jul and 7 Sep 2020 V. Lehmann https://doi.org/10.60656/e938967bc0524dee

MWRpy: A Python Package for Processing Microwave Radiometer Data (https://github.com/actris-cloudnet/mwrpy) Tobias Marke et al. https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.06733

Custom collection of model data from Lindenberg between 14 Jul and 20 Oct 2020 E. O'Connor https://doi.org/10.60656/ca8017ee6ef94027

Model code and software

pyMakeRetrieval python code Andreas Foth https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.13692444

PAMTRA: Passive and Active Microwave TRAnsfer Tool v1.0 Mario Mech et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3582992

Short summary

Microwave radiometers are usually not able to provide atmospheric quantities such as temperature profiles during rain. We present a method based on a selection of specific frequencies and elevation angles from microwave radiometer observations. A comparison with a numerical weather prediction model shows the presented method allows low-level temperature profiles during rain to be resolved, with rain rates of up to 2.5 mm h^−1_,, which was not possible before with state-of-the-art retrievals.