Spaceborne Precipitation Radar

Abstract

Spaceborne precipitation radar had been strongly desired by the world meteorological community since the launch of the first meteorological satellite TIROS-1 in 1960. Spaceborne precipitation radar was finally realized by the launch of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) observatory in 1997. The 13.8-GHz TRMM precipitation radar (PR) worked for＞17 years in orbit to observe various types of precipitation systems. In 2014, the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) core satellite with dual-frequency (13.6- and 35.5-GHz) precipitation radar (DPR) was launched and is currently working well in orbit. The very small satellite RainCube with 35.75-GHz rain radar was launched in 2018 and is working in orbit now. The new (i.e., after the GPM) spaceborne precipitation missions are being studied at NASA, JAXA, and other organizations. These spaceborne precipitation radar systems and future missions are described in detail herein, and the possibilities of other types of spaceborne precipitation radar (including conical scan-type small radar in low earth orbit and bistatic precipitation radar in a geostationary orbit) are also discussed.