PR/TMI複合アルゴリズム

抄録

A precipitation radar (PR) has been first flown on TRMM satellite which was launched in November, 1997. Although a radar can give detailed rain rate distribution information, there are several uncertainties in estimated rain rate profiles caused by a variation of rain drop size distribution and attenuation of a radar wave due to rain itself. On the satellite, a multi-frequency microwave radiometer (TRMM Microwave Imager, TMI) is also installed in addition to the PR. This configuration allows us to use both the PR and TMI data simultaneously for effective estimation of rain rate profiles. After brief description of rain measurements with a radar and a radiometer, a TRMM day-1 radar/radiometer combined rain-profiling algorithm, which was developed for an early days application, is explained plainly. Some topics are suggested for future research on the radar/radiometer combined algorithm. The combined use of the PR and TMI data should not be only a supplemental use of each of them, rather it should be an advanced data fusion as a second generation algorithm.