Articles | Volume 19, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-19-79-2026
© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Special issue:
https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-19-79-2026
© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Research article
| 
06 Jan 2026
Research article |
| 06 Jan 2026
| 06 Jan 2026
Exploring vertical motions in convective and stratiform precipitation using spaceborne radar observations: insights from EarthCARE and GPM coincidence dataset
Earth Observation Research Center, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8505, Japan
Takuji Kubota
Earth Observation Research Center, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8505, Japan
F. Joseph Turk
Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science and Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
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Tatsuya Seiki, Horoaki Horie, Yuichiro Hagihara, Shunsuke Aoki, and Akira T. Noda
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-4819, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-4819, 2025
This preprint is open for discussion and under review for Atmospheric Measurement Techniques (AMT).
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How ice particles grow in extremely cold conditions remains poorly understood due to limited observations. This study develops a new method to identify dominant ice-particle growth from radar reflectivity and Doppler velocity. It reveals, for the first time, that key growth processes vary not only with temperature but also by region. These findings highlight EarthCARE's value for monitoring clouds and improving climate model representation.
Shu-Ya Chen, Ying-Hwa Kuo, Hsiu-Wen Li, Ramon Padullés, Estel Cardellach, and Francis Joseph Turk
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 18, 5265–5280, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-18-5265-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-18-5265-2025, 2025
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This study used Polarimetric radio occultation (PRO) observations to evaluate simulations of cloud hydrometeors with five microphysics schemes for three typhoons from 2019 and 2021. The simulated cloud hydrometeors distributions varied significantly depending on model initial conditions, typhoon structures, and microphysics schemes. Results in this study demonstrate the potential for using PRO observation to evaluate the performance of different microphysics schemes in numerical models.
Tatsuya Seiki, Horoaki Horie, Yuichiro Hagihara, Shunsuke Aoki, and Akira T. Noda
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-4819, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-4819, 2025
This preprint is open for discussion and under review for Atmospheric Measurement Techniques (AMT).
Short summary
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How ice particles grow in extremely cold conditions remains poorly understood due to limited observations. This study develops a new method to identify dominant ice-particle growth from radar reflectivity and Doppler velocity. It reveals, for the first time, that key growth processes vary not only with temperature but also by region. These findings highlight EarthCARE's value for monitoring clouds and improving climate model representation.
Jonas E. Katona, Manuel de la Torre Juárez, Terence L. Kubar, F. Joseph Turk, Kuo-Nung Wang, and Ramon Padullés
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 18, 953–970, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-18-953-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-18-953-2025, 2025
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Polarimetric radio occultations (PROs) use polarized radio signals from satellites to detect moisture and precipitation in Earth's atmosphere. By applying nonlinear regression and k-means cluster analysis to over 2 years of PRO and non-PRO data, this study shows how deviations from a refractivity model relate to vertical profiles of water vapor pressure (moisture) and that differences between components of PRO signals correlate directly with vertical profiles of water path (precipitation).
Terence L. Kubar, Manuel de la Torre Juarez, Jonas Katona, and F. Joseph Turk
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-3898, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-3898, 2025
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We analyze space-borne observations of simultaneous vertical profiles of precipitation, cloud layers, and temperatures, and find that about 80–90 % of cloud tops globally reach or are below the level of least stability. Since water vapor is limited at these low temperatures, this height may be a more important constraint on cloud top heights than the tropopause height below the level of maximum stability. Only the heaviest precipitating clouds vertically extend above this most unstable level.
Ramon Padullés, Estel Cardellach, Antía Paz, Santi Oliveras, Douglas C. Hunt, Sergey Sokolovskiy, Jan-Peter Weiss, Kuo-Nung Wang, F. Joe Turk, Chi O. Ao, and Manuel de la Torre Juárez
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 5643–5663, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-5643-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-5643-2024, 2024
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This dataset provides, for the first time, combined observations of clouds and precipitation with coincident retrievals of atmospheric thermodynamics obtained from the same space-based instrument. Furthermore, it provides the locations of the ray trajectories of the observations along various precipitation-related products interpolated into them with the aim of fostering the use of such dataset in scientific and operational applications.
Hajime Okamoto, Kaori Sato, Tomoaki Nishizawa, Yoshitaka Jin, Takashi Nakajima, Minrui Wang, Masaki Satoh, Kentaroh Suzuki, Woosub Roh, Akira Yamauchi, Hiroaki Horie, Yuichi Ohno, Yuichiro Hagihara, Hiroshi Ishimoto, Rei Kudo, Takuji Kubota, and Toshiyuki Tanaka
Atmos. Meas. Tech. Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-2024-101, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-2024-101, 2024
Publication in AMT not foreseen
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This article gives overviews of the JAXA L2 algorithms and products by Japanese science teams for EarthCARE. The algorithms provide corrected Doppler velocity, cloud particle shape and orientations, microphysics of clouds and aerosols, and radiative fluxes and heating rate. The retrievals by the algorithms are demonstrated and evaluated using NICAM/J-simulator outputs. The JAXA EarthCARE L2 products will bring new scientific knowledge about the clouds, aerosols, radiation and convections.
Woosub Roh, Masaki Satoh, Yuichiro Hagihara, Hiroaki Horie, Yuichi Ohno, and Takuji Kubota
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 17, 3455–3466, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-3455-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-3455-2024, 2024
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The advantage of the use of Doppler velocity in the categorization of the hydrometeors is that Doppler velocities suffer less impact from the attenuation of rain and wet attenuation on an antenna. The ground Cloud Profiling Radar observation of the radar reflectivity for the precipitation case is limited because of wet attenuation on an antenna. We found the main contribution to Doppler velocities is the terminal velocity of hydrometeors by analysis of simulation results.
Michael Eisinger, Fabien Marnas, Kotska Wallace, Takuji Kubota, Nobuhiro Tomiyama, Yuichi Ohno, Toshiyuki Tanaka, Eichi Tomita, Tobias Wehr, and Dirk Bernaerts
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 17, 839–862, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-839-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-839-2024, 2024
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The Earth Cloud Aerosol and Radiation Explorer (EarthCARE) is an ESA–JAXA satellite mission to be launched in 2024. We presented an overview of the EarthCARE processors' development, with processors developed by teams in Europe, Japan, and Canada. EarthCARE will allow scientists to evaluate the representation of cloud, aerosol, precipitation, and radiative flux in weather forecast and climate models, with the objective to better understand cloud processes and improve weather and climate models.
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.
Tobias Wehr, Takuji Kubota, Georgios Tzeremes, Kotska Wallace, Hirotaka Nakatsuka, Yuichi Ohno, Rob Koopman, Stephanie Rusli, Maki Kikuchi, Michael Eisinger, Toshiyuki Tanaka, Masatoshi Taga, Patrick Deghaye, Eichi Tomita, and Dirk Bernaerts
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 16, 3581–3608, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-16-3581-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-16-3581-2023, 2023
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The EarthCARE satellite is due for launch in 2024. It includes four scientific instruments to measure global vertical profiles of aerosols, clouds and precipitation properties together with radiative fluxes and derived heating rates. The mission's scientific requirements, the satellite and the ground segment are described. In particular, the four scientific instruments and their performance are described at the level of detail required by mission data users.
Woosub Roh, Masaki Satoh, Tempei Hashino, Shuhei Matsugishi, Tomoe Nasuno, and Takuji Kubota
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 16, 3331–3344, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-16-3331-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-16-3331-2023, 2023
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JAXA EarthCARE synthetic data (JAXA L1 data) were compiled using the global storm-resolving model (GSRM) NICAM (Nonhydrostatic ICosahedral
Atmospheric Model) simulation with 3.5 km horizontal resolution and the Joint-Simulator. JAXA L1 data are intended to support the development of JAXA retrieval algorithms for the EarthCARE sensor before launch of the satellite. The expected orbit of EarthCARE and horizontal sampling of each sensor were used to simulate the signals.
Yuichiro Hagihara, Yuichi Ohno, Hiroaki Horie, Woosub Roh, Masaki Satoh, and Takuji Kubota
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 16, 3211–3219, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-16-3211-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-16-3211-2023, 2023
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The CPR on the EarthCARE satellite is the first satellite-borne Doppler radar. We evaluated the effectiveness of horizontal integration and the unfolding method for the reduction of the Doppler error (the standard deviation of the random error) in the CPR_ECO product. The error was higher in the tropics than in the other latitudes due to frequent rain echo occurrence and limitation of its unfolding correction. If we use low-mode operation (high PRF), the errors become small enough.
Ramon Padullés, Estel Cardellach, and F. Joseph Turk
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 23, 2199–2214, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-2199-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-2199-2023, 2023
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The results of comparing the polarimetric radio occultation observables and the ice water content retrieved from the CloudSat radar in a global and statistical way show a strong correlation between the geographical patterns of both quantities for a wide range of heights. This implies that horizontally oriented hydrometeors are systematically present through the whole globe and through all vertical levels, which could provide insights on the physical processes leading to precipitation.
Minrui Wang, Takashi Y. Nakajima, Woosub Roh, Masaki Satoh, Kentaroh Suzuki, Takuji Kubota, and Mayumi Yoshida
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 16, 603–623, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-16-603-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-16-603-2023, 2023
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SMILE (a spectral misalignment in which a shift in the center wavelength appears as a distortion in the spectral image) was detected during our recent work. To evaluate how it affects the cloud retrieval products, we did a simulation of EarthCARE-MSI forward radiation, evaluating the error in simulated scenes from a global cloud system-resolving model and a satellite simulator. Our results indicated that the error from SMILE was generally small and negligible for oceanic scenes.
Svetla Hristova-Veleva, Sara Q. Zhang, F. Joseph Turk, Ziad S. Haddad, and Randy C. Sawaya
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 14, 3333–3350, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-14-3333-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-14-3333-2021, 2021
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The assimilation of airborne-based three-dimensional winds into a mesoscale weather forecast model resulted in better agreement with airborne radar-derived precipitation 3-D structure at later model time steps. More importantly, there was also a discernible impact on the resultant wind and moisture structure, in accord with independent analysis of the wind structure and external satellite observations.
Miguel Ricardo A. Hilario, Ewan Crosbie, Michael Shook, Jeffrey S. Reid, Maria Obiminda L. Cambaliza, James Bernard B. Simpas, Luke Ziemba, Joshua P. DiGangi, Glenn S. Diskin, Phu Nguyen, F. Joseph Turk, Edward Winstead, Claire E. Robinson, Jian Wang, Jiaoshi Zhang, Yang Wang, Subin Yoon, James Flynn, Sergio L. Alvarez, Ali Behrangi, and Armin Sorooshian
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 21, 3777–3802, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-3777-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-3777-2021, 2021
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This study characterizes long-range transport from major Asian pollution sources into the tropical northwest Pacific and the impact of scavenging on these air masses. We combined aircraft observations, HYSPLIT trajectories, reanalysis, and satellite retrievals to reveal distinct composition and size distribution profiles associated with specific emission sources and wet scavenging. The results of this work have implications for international policymaking related to climate and health.
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Short summary
Using coincident observations from the EarthCARE Cloud Profiling Radar with Doppler velocity measurement capability and the Dual-Frequency Precipitation Radar on the Global Precipitation Measurement, vertical motions in stratiform and convective precipitation systems are examined, providing insights into the dynamical and microphysical processes inside deep clouds. This enables a more comprehensive understanding of hydrometeor fall speeds and vertical air motions in precipitation systems.
Using coincident observations from the EarthCARE Cloud Profiling Radar with Doppler velocity...
