Radar and Satellite Observations of Precipitation Systems: Climate Applications

A special issue of Atmosphere (ISSN 2073-4433). This special issue belongs to the section "Meteorology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2018) | Viewed by 7392

Special Issue Editor

East Carolina University; Department of Geography, Planning and Environment; Greenville, North Carolina, USA
Interests: precipitating cloud systems; radar and satellite meteorology; regional climate variability

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Observations of clouds and precipitation from surface and satellite remote sensors are critical to monitoring and forecasting changes in the climate system. Spaceborne and surface passive radiometers and microwave radar systems have revolutionized our understanding of regional and global precipitation systems, and are reaching maturity as long-term climatological data sets. Such observations have, in turn, advanced the capability of general circulation models of the atmosphere to reconstruct past climate and forecast changes to future climate, as well as providing validation for regional scale model simulations.

NASA’s Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) and the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) program have produced an unprecedented, ongoing dataset of the three-dimensional structure of precipitation systems that combined spans nearly 20 years. Other satellite missions, such as CloudSat, Aqua, and Terra, have been monitoring the internal structure of cloud systems for over a decade. Geostationary satellite observations since 1979 provide regional and global daily to monthly integrated precipitation, for example, from the Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP). The national network of Next-generation weather RADars (NEXRAD) in the United States are the basis for high-resolution precipitation data sets spanning from the mid-1990s to the present. These and other climatological data sets allow us to quantify not only precipitation, but also the energy and momentum exchanges between precipitating cloud systems and the large-scale atmospheric circulation that influence regional and global wind and moisture patterns, over time scales ranging from daily to decadal. Rapid advances in data storage capacity, data mining, and computer processing power make possible detailed climatological analysis of precipitation systems both regionally and globally.

This Special Issue invites contributions of original research utilizing climatological observations of clouds and precipitation from satellite and surface remote sensing platforms, with applications to monitoring and understanding regional and global climate variability on a broad range of time scales from daily to decadal. Manuscripts may focus on the development of related data sets and analysis techniques toward the application of climate studies. We also welcome studies that combine climatological precipitation data sets with regional to global scale modeling studies of climate variability over a variety of time scales.

Prof. Tom Rickenbach
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • Precipitation systems
  • Radar and satellite remote sensing
  • Convection
  • Climate variability
  • Climate modeling
  • Precipitation measurement
  • Regional climate
  • Satellite missions

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

16 pages, 3104 KiB  
Article
A Velocity Dealiasing Algorithm on Frequency Diversity Pulse-Pair for Future Geostationary Spaceborne Doppler Weather Radar
by Xuehua Li, Chuanzhi Wang, Zhengxia Qin, Jianxin He, Fang Liu and Qing Sun
Atmosphere 2018, 9(6), 234; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos9060234 - 15 Jun 2018
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 3748
Abstract
Velocity ambiguity is one of the main challenges in accurately measuring velocity for the future Geostationary Spaceborne Doppler Weather Radar (GSDWR) due to its short wavelength. The aim of this work was to provide a novel velocity dealiasing method for frequency diversity for [...] Read more.
Velocity ambiguity is one of the main challenges in accurately measuring velocity for the future Geostationary Spaceborne Doppler Weather Radar (GSDWR) due to its short wavelength. The aim of this work was to provide a novel velocity dealiasing method for frequency diversity for the future implementation of GSDWR. Two different carrier frequencies were transmitted on the adjacent pulse-pair and the order of the pulse-pair was exchanged during the transmission of the next pulse-pair. The Doppler phase shift between these two adjacent pulses was estimated based on the technique of the frequency diversity pulse-pair (FDPP), and Doppler velocity was estimated on the sum of the Doppler phase within the adjacent pulse repetition time (PRT). From the theoretical result, the maximum unambiguous velocity estimated by FDPP is only decided by the interval time of the two adjacent pulses and radar wavelength. An echo signal model on frequency diversity was established to simulate echo signals of the GSDWR to verify the extension of the maximum unambiguous velocity and the accuracy of the velocity estimation for FDPP used on GSDWR. The study demonstrates that the FDPP algorithm can extend the maximum unambiguous velocity greater than the Stagger PRT method and the unambiguous range and velocity are no longer limited by the chosen value of pulse repetition frequency (PRF). In the Ka band, the maximum unambiguous velocity can be extended to 105 m/s when the interval time is 10 μs and most velocity estimation biases are less than 0.5 m/s. Full article
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18 pages, 11194 KiB  
Article
Cloud-Precipitation Parameters and Radiative Forcing of Warm Precipitating Cloud over the Tropical Pacific Ocean Based on TRMM Datasets and Radiative Transfer Model
by Fang Qin, Tao Xian and Yunfei Fu
Atmosphere 2018, 9(6), 206; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos9060206 - 25 May 2018
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Abstract
An approach is proposed for combining observations from the Precipitation Radar (PR) and the Visible and Infrared Scanner (VIRS) onboard the TRMM (Topical Rainfall Measuring Mission) satellite to investigate the climatology of warm precipitating cloud (WPC) microphysical properties, such as cloud effective radius [...] Read more.
An approach is proposed for combining observations from the Precipitation Radar (PR) and the Visible and Infrared Scanner (VIRS) onboard the TRMM (Topical Rainfall Measuring Mission) satellite to investigate the climatology of warm precipitating cloud (WPC) microphysical properties, such as cloud effective radius (Re), cloud optical depth (Tau), and liquid water path (LWP) in the tropical Pacific Ocean (20° S–20° N) from 1998 to 2012. The WPCs are captured by VIRS/PR and categorized into two extreme (light and heavy) rain rate types (EL-WPC, EH-WPC). Their radiative effects are also simulated by the Santa Barbara DISORT Atmospheric Radiative Transfer (SBDART) radiative transfer model. The results indicate that total, EL-WPC and EH-WPC reach their highest occurrence frequencies of 22%, 1.6% and 2.0% in the North-west Pacific, Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) and South Pacific Convergence Zone (SPCZ), respectively. Most of the EL-WPC has higher ratio to total WPC in the Pacific warm pool with warmer sea-surface temperature (SST), while the higher ratio for EH-WPC is located in SPCZ associated with deep convection. WPC has an average Re of 15.6 μm, Tau of 20, and LWP of 200 g m−2. EL-WPC is a little larger average Re than EH-WPC, and larger Re is distributed with higher echo top height (H). Moreover, for EH-WPC, the increased Re by the collision-coalescence process in lower H (<3.5 km) generates a stronger rain rate. In addition, although the H of EH-WPC decreases along the increased brightness temperature at 10.8 μm (BT4), this is not obvious in EL-WPC possibly due to a certain echo height to generate a light precipitation. With an increased rain rate of WPC, Re becomes larger in EL-WPC and smaller in EH-WPC. EL-WPC induces a cooling of approximately −0.5 W m−2 for radiative forcing, which is −3.0 W m−2 less than the EH-WPC. Full article
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