Combined MW-IR Precipitation Evolving Technique (PET) of convective rain fields

Abstract

Abstract. This paper describes a new multi-sensor approach for convective rain cell continuous monitoring based on rainfall derived from Passive Microwave (PM) remote sensing from the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite coupled with Infrared (IR) remote sensing Brightness Temperature (TB) from the Geosynchronous (GEO) orbit satellite. The proposed technique, which we call Precipitation Evolving Technique (PET), propagates forward in time and space the last available rain-rate (RR) maps derived from Advanced Microwave Sounding Units (AMSU) and Microwave Humidity Sounder (MHS) observations by using IR TB maps of water vapor (6.2 µm) and thermal-IR (10.8 µm) channels from a Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) radiometer. PET is based on two different modules, the first for morphing and tracking rain cells and the second for dynamic calibration IR-RR. The Morphing module uses two consecutive IR data to identify the motion vector to be applied to the rain field so as to propagate it in time and space, whilst the Calibration module computes the dynamic relationship between IR and RR in order to take into account genesis, extinction or size variation of rain cells. Finally, a combination of the Morphing and Calibration output provides a rainfall map at IR space and time scale, and the whole procedure is reiterated by using the last RR map output until a new MW-based rainfall is available. The PET results have been analyzed with respect to two different PM-RR retrieval algorithms for seven case studies referring to different rainfall convective events. The qualitative, dichotomous and continuous assessments show an overall ability of this technique to propagate rain field at least for 2-3 h propagation time.

Mapping Fine Spatial Resolution Precipitation from TRMM Precipitation Datasets Using an Ensemble Learning Method and MODIS Optical Products in China

“…Precipitation is a key component of the global water cycle [1][2][3][4][5][6][7], and is important for plant physiological, ecological, environmental, and hydrological models [8][9][10][11]. Mapping precipitation with high spatial resolution is therefore beneficial for monitoring ecosystem and environmental changes.…”

“…Mapping precipitation with high spatial resolution is therefore beneficial for monitoring ecosystem and environmental changes. Satellites with radar and microwave sensors can provide reliable sources of precipitation data [3,5,[12][13][14][15][16], especially for un-gauged regions. During the past three decades, a multitude of global precipitation products have been published and they were widely used in multiple hydrological, meteorological, and environmental applications [3,14,17,18].…”

Objective Classification of Rainfall in Northern Europe for Online Operation of Urban Water Systems Based on Clustering Techniques

“…During recent years, significant progress was made in measuring and forecasting spatial rainfall fields through radar [3,[13][14][15][16][17], as well as numerical weather predictions (NWP) [14,18] for operational and design purposes in urban hydrology and future developments may lead to the application of satellite observations [19]. The spatial information in such data can be exploited for the purpose of distinguishing between different types of rainfall events [20].…”

A statistical approach for rain intensity differentiation using Meteosat Second Generation–Spinning Enhanced Visible and InfraRed Imager observations

“…Other techniques are based on cloud motion and exploit IR observations to provide an estimate of cloud movement to be used for transporting the more direct MW rainfall observations (Joyce et al, 2004). Di Paola et al (2012) proposed the Precipitation Evolving Technique (PET) for convective rain cell continuous monitoring. PET propagates forward in space and time the latest RR map inferred by AMSU and MHS MW observations by using SEVIRI IR brightness temperature maps.…”