Recent improvements in a method for remotely sensing precipitation and latent heating distributions based upon satellite-borne, passive microwave radiometer observations are summarized. In applications to synthetic data, estimated rainfall rates at sensor footprint-scale (14 km) are subject to significant random errors, but these errors are substantially reduced by spatial averaging. After spatial-averaging, rain rate and latent heating profile estimates exhibit biases that arise from a lack of specificity in the information contained in the microwave radiance data.
The retrieval method is applied to observations from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission Microwave Radiometer (TMI). Retrieved instantaneous precipitation and heating distributions show general self-consistency and delineate plausible storm structures in an application to TMI observations of a mesoscale convective system over the tropical North Atlantic. Well-known climatological distributions of rainfall are reproduced by global, monthly-mean TMI precipitation estimates from July 2000. Zonal-mean heating profiles in the Tropics from the same period exhibit a primary maximum of heating near 7 km altitude and a secondary peak near 3 km, while at higher latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere, a vertical structure with heating aloft and cooling at lower altitudes is derived.
Rainfall retrieved from space-borne instruments has been accepted as reliable and accurate by a majority of the atmospheric community. One of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) facility rain algorithms is the passive microwave-based rain retrieval algorithm (2A-12). In order to introduce latent heating as a product of 2A-12, many improvements have been made to the current Version 5 algorithm. This paper shows how these modifications impact retrieved surface rainfall rate and latent heating estimates. Comparisons indicate that the error statistics for the prototype Version 6 2A-12 are similar to those of Version 5 at footprint-scale and 30-km resolution; however, consistent latent heating vertical profiles are now obtainable. Preliminary comparisons to dual-doppler radar-based estimates show similar heating structures, but further study will be required to establish the general credibility of 2A-12 latent heating estimates.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.