ALBERT

Description: The paper presents the intercomparison of various algorithms in determining the convective and stratiform precipitation in tropical convection. The latent heat released from precipitation is the driving mechanism for the general circulation of the atmosphere and exhibits different vertical profile in convective and stratiform regimes of the tropical convection. The primary goal of this paper is to evaluate the performance of the operational convective/stratiform algorithm that is employed by the NASA Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) ground validation program. The operational algorithm is based on the texture of radar reflectivity field at constant altitude. The TRMM ground validation program continuously monitors the tropical convection through ground based radar and rain gauge network at selected sites around the tropics and generates the rainfall products including the convective/stratiform rainfall map that can readily be used by the TRMM satellite program. An evaluation and improvement of these rainfall products requires additional measurements that can be available through field campaigns. The data used in this study was collected during the second phase of the Texas Florida Underflights (TEFLUN-B) field campaign in East Central Florida, a primary site of the TRMM ground validation program. The TEFLUN-B field campaign was conducted in August and September 1998 in support of the NASA Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite observations. An objective of the TEFLUN-B field campaign was to obtain the ground based precipitation measurements of Florida convection at different temporal and spatial scales. The field campaign had various components of precipitation measurements including dual wavelength precipitation profiler, various types of disdrometers and rain gauges, collocated about 40 km southwest of Melbourne NEXRAD radar. In this study, we examine the profiler based reflectivity and Doppler velocity and the disdrometer based drop size distribution observations to evaluate the operational scanning radar (i.e. NEXRAD) based convective/stratiform algorithm.