Dual-frequency precipitation radar estimation of rainfall rate: Potential application to global precipitation mission

Precipitation plays a crucial role to the global water and energy cycle that governs the weather, climate, and ecological systems. Thorough understanding and accurate forecasting of precipitation is essential to the affairs of humans. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), launched in 1997, is a joint space mission between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) designed to monitor and study tropical rainfall. The Precipitation Radar (PR) on board the TRMM satellite is the first space borne instrument, capable of providing high-resolution vertical profile of precipitation on a global scale. TRMM-PR operates at a single frequency of Ku- (13.6 GHz) band. The microphysical retrieval algorithms for TRMM-PR rely on the surface-reference technique (SRT) to estimate path attenuation and correct the measured Ku-band reflectivity. With the attenuation-corrected reflectivities, a modified Hitschfeld-Bordan method [1] is then used to retrieve limited drop size distribution (DSD) information, and the rainfall rate [2]. One disadvantage of single-frequency space borne radar such as TRMM-PR is that it is not easy to retrieve the DSD parameters completely. Therefore, k-Z and Z-R relationships, with their inherent assumptions, are used to estimate rainfall rate which is not sufficient to capture the variability of precipitation and has large uncertainty. Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission is poised to be the next generation observations from space after the TRMM mission. GPM is a science mission with integrated applications goals for advancing the knowledge of the global water/energy cycle variability as well as improving weather, climate, and hydrological prediction capabilities through more accurate and frequent measurements of global precipitation. The GPM core satellite will be equipped with a dual-frequency precipitation radar (DPR) operating at Ku- (13.6 GHz) and Ka- (35.5 GHz) band [3]. Taking two independent sets of observation, DPR on aboard the GPM is expected to improve our knowledge of precipitation processes relative to the single-frequency (Ku- band) radar used in TRMM by providing greater dynamic range, more detailed information on microphysics. Two parameters of DSDs can be retrieved from dual-frequency observations and better accuracies in rainfall estimation can be achieved. Theoretically, rainfall rate is a function of rain drop size distribution and rain drop terminal velocity, R=0.67π∗10−3∫ v(D)D3N(D)dD. The most critical component in rainfall rate estimation is the time-space variation of drop size distribution. Le and Chandrasekar (2014) [4] developed a hybrid method to retrieve drop size distribution parameters for GPM-DPR. The hybrid method is a profile-based optimization algorithm with the philosophy to combine the attributes of forward method and linear constraints of DSDs in rain. Two of the gamma distribution parameters [5], Do and Nw, at surface are optimized when the deviation between estimates and observations are minimized. The hybrid method can be used to estimate DSDs at each space and temporal resolution of GPM-DPR observation. In this paper, rainfall rate is calculated using DSDs retrieved through the hybrid method [4] based on assumptions of particle terminal velocity. Data collected by GPM-DPR is capability to cover ±65° latitude of the earth with every 2–4 hours. Thus, a global rainfall map can be generated. In polarimetric radar system, rainfall rate can be estimated through dual-polarized radar parameter such as Zdr [6][7]. Zdr is called differential reflectivity and it is a function of particle characteristics itself. Similar of Zdr to the dual-polarization radar retrieval, there is a parameter called dual-frequency ratio (DFR) that plays an important role in the dual-frequency radar retrievals. DFR is defined as the difference of the radar reflectivity at two frequencies in decibels which carries information of single particle characteristics. In this study, we investigate potential relation between rainfall rate, reflectivity at Ku- band and DFR using theoretical simulation [8] and curve fitting. Figure 1 shows a scattergram of rainfall rate estimation from R(Zh, DFR) versus true rainfall rate. Both Zku and DFR are in linear form in this equation. This provides a direct estimation of rainfall rate without prior knowledge of drop size distribution. Since both reflectivity and dual frequency ratio are intrinsic values, attenuation correction is needed before rain rate can be estimated through R(Zh, DFR) equation. The hybrid method [4] described in previous paragraph could be one of the algorithms to perform attenuation correction. The global rainfall map generated through R(Zh, DFR) approach will be cross-compared with DSD approach described in the previous paragraph, as well as other approaches such as attenuation based rainfall rate. The comprehensive analysis of the three techniques are presented.