Satellite radar precipitation measurements suffer from specific technical limitations.
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Scientific literature establishes that satellite radar precipitation measurements experience specific technical limitations, such as difficulties resolving light precipitation, issues with clutter echoes from surface returns, and an inability to provide estimates close to the surface.
The multisatellite precipitation product from the U.S. Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission Science Team, the Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM (IMERG), is a widely used GPM product. It merges precipitation retrievals from passive microwave (PMW) and infrared (IR) sensors on board a collection of satellites operated by several agencies around the globe. IMERG retrospectively provides over two decades’ global precipitation data at fine temporal–spatial resolutions. This overland study evaluates the satellite-based precipitation statistics in the latest versions of the IMERG (V06B and V07B) products over the conterminous United States. High-resolution, ground-based radar precipitation estimates from a quality-controlled version of the Multi-Radar Multi-Sensor system—developed under the GPM Ground Validation effort—are used as the reference product. The relative performance of the two IMERG versions is evaluated using volumetric and categorical statistical metrics. The precipitation retrieval errors are further separated into three individual components: hit bias, missed-precipitation bias, and false-precipitation bias, and all are traced back to the sensor-specific sources, as well as different levels of the IR input usage. The evaluation highlights the clear improvement in the IMERG V07B precipitation product for all seasons, especially for winter, with reduced systematic bias and uncertainty and increased precipitation detectability in comparison with V0
Precise estimates of precipitation are required for many environmental tasks, including water resources management, improvement of numerical model outputs, nowcasting and evaluation of anthropogenic impacts on global climate. Nonetheless, the availability of such estimates is hindered by technical limitations. Rain gauge and ground radar measurements are limited to land, and the retrieval of quantitative precipitation estimates from satellite has several problems including the indirectness of infrared-based geostationary estimates, and the low orbit of those microwave instruments capable of pr
The accurate representation of precipitation across the Earth’s surface is crucial to furthering our knowledge and understanding of the Earth System and its component processes. Precipitation poses a number of challenges, particularly due to the variability of precipitation over time and space and whether it falls as snow or rain. While conventional measures of precipitation are reasonably good at the location of their measurement, their distribution across the Earth’s surface is uneven with some regions having no surface measurements. Spaceborne sensors have the capability of providing regular observations across the Earth’s surface that can provide estimates of precipitation. However, the estimation of precipitation from satellite observations is not necessarily straightforward. Visible and/or infrared techniques rely upon imprecise cloud-top to surface precipitation relationships, while the sensitivity of passive microwave techniques to different precipitation types is not consistent. Active microwave (radar) observations provide the most direct satellite measurements of precipitation but cannot provide estimates close to the surface and are generally not sufficiently sensitive to resolve light precipitation. This is particularly problematic at mid to high latitudes, where light and/or shallow precipitation dominates. This paper compares measurements made by ground-based weather radars, Micro Rain Radars and the spaceborne Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar to study both l
For the spaceborne precipitation radars, since the surface echoes are very strong, the clutter echoes caused by the antenna sidelobe mask the echoes of light precipitation even if the low sidelobe antenna is designed. This study develops a method of the clutter removal for the spaceborne precipitation radars to mitigate the misjudgment of the light precipitation detection. The radar data of the Dual-frequency precipitation radar (DPR) onboard the Global Precipitation Measurement mission's (GPM 's) core satellite and the Precipitation Radar (PR) onboard the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (
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