Sindhu, KD and Bhat, GS (2013) Comparison of CloudSat and TRMM radar reflectivities. In: JOURNAL OF EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE, 122 (4). pp. 947-956.
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Abstract
Comparison of reflectivity data of radars onboard CloudSat and TRMM is performed using coincident overpasses. The contoured frequency by altitude diagrams (CFADs) are constructed for two cases: (a) only include collocated vertical profiles that are most likely to be raining and (b) include all collocated profiles along with cloudy pixels falling within a distance of about 50 km from the centre point of coincidence. Our analysis shows that for both cases, CloudSat underestimates the radar reflectivity by about 10 dBZ compared to that of TRMM radar below 15 km altitude. The difference is well outside the uncertainty value of similar to 2 dBZ of each radar. Further, CloudSat reflectivity shows a decreasing trend while that of TRMM radar an increasing trend below 4 km height. Basically W-band radar that CloudSat flies suffers strong attenuation in precipitating clouds and its reflectivity value rarely exceeds 20 dBZ though its technical specification indicates the upper measurement limit to be 40 dBZ. TRMM radar, on the other hand, cannot measure values below 17 dBZ. In fact combining data from these two radars seems to give a better overall spatial structure of convective clouds.
| Item Type: | Journal Article |
|---|---|
| Publication: | JOURNAL OF EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE |
| Publisher: | INDIAN ACAD SCIENCES |
| Additional Information: | Copyright of this article is belongs to INDIAN ACAD SCIENCES |
| Keywords: | CloudSat CPR; TRMM PR; CFADs; radar reflectivity |
| Department/Centre: | Division of Mechanical Sciences > Centre for Earth Sciences |
| Date Deposited: | 02 Oct 2013 14:56 |
| Last Modified: | 02 Oct 2013 14:56 |
| URI: | http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/47440 |
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