ALBERT

Description: Atmospheric latent heating field is fundamental to all modes of atmospheric circulation and upper mixed layer circulations of the ocean. The key to understanding the atmospheric heating process is understanding how and where precipitation occurs. The principal atmospheric processes which link precipitation to atmospheric circulation include: (1) convective mass fluxes in the form of updrafts and downdrafts; (2) microphysical. nucleation and growth of hydrometeors; and (3) latent heating through dynamical controls on the gravitation-driven vertical mass flux of precipitation. It is well-known that surface and near-surface rainfall are two of the key forcing functions on a number of geophysical parameters at the surface-air interface. Over ocean, rainfall variation contributes to the redistribution of water salinity, sea surface temperature, fresh water supply, and marine biology and eco-system. Over land, rainfall plays a significant role in rainforest ecology and chemistry, land hydrology and surface runoff. Precipitation has also been closely linked to a number of atmospheric anomalies and natural hazards that occur at various time scales, including hurricanes, cyclones, tropical depressions, flash floods, droughts, and most noticeable of all, the El Ninos. From this point of view, the significance of global atmospheric precipitation has gone far beyond the science arena - it has a far-reaching impact on human's socio-economic well-being and sustenance. These and many other science applications require the knowledge of, in a global basis, the vertical rain structures, including vertical motion, rain intensity, differentiation of the precipitating hydrometeors' phase state, and the classification of mesoscale physical structure of the rain systems. The only direct means to obtain such information is the use of a spaceborne profiling radar. It is important to mention that the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) have made a great stride forward towards this ultimate goal. The Precipitation Radar (PR) aboard the TRMM satellite is the first ever spaceborne radar dedicated to three-dimensional, global precipitation measurements over the tropics and the subtropics, as well as the detailed synopsis of a wide range of tropical rain storm systems. In only twelve months since launch, the PR, together with other science instruments abroad the satellite have already provided unprecedented insights into the rainfall systems. It is anticipated the a lot more exciting and important rain observations would be made by TRMM throughout its mission duration. While TRMM has provided invaluable data to the user community, it is only the first step towards advancing our knowledge on rain processes and its contributions to climate variability. It is envisioned that a TRMM follow-on mission is needed in such a way to capitalize on the pioneering information provided by TRMM, and its instrument capability must be extended beyond TRMM in such a way to fully address the key science questions from microphysical to climatic time scale. In fact, a number of new and innovative mission concepts have recently put forth for this purpose. Almost all of these new concepts have suggested the utility of a more advanced, high-resolution, Doppler-enabled, vertical profiling radar that can provide multi-parameter observations of precipitation. In this paper, a system concept for a second- gene ration precipitation radar (PR-2) which addresses the above requirements will be described.

Description: In this paper a sea surface radar echo spectral analysis technique to correct for the rainfall velocity error caused by radar-pointing uncertainty is presented. The correction procedure is quite straightforward when the radar is observing a homogeneous rainfall field. When nonuniform beam filling (NUBF) occurs and attenuating frequencies are used, however, additional steps are necessary in order to correctly estimate the antenna-pointing direction. This new technique relies on the application of the combined frequency-time (CFT) algorithm to correct for uneven attenuation effects on the observed sea surface Doppler spectrum. The performance of this correction technique was evaluated by a Monte Carlo simulation of the Doppler precipitation radar backscatter from high-resolution 3D rain fields (either generated by a cloud resolving numerical model or retrieved from airborne radar measurements). The results show that the antenna-pointing-induced error can, indeed, be reduced by the proposed technique in order to achieve 1 m s(exp -1) accuracy on rainfall vertical velocity estimates.

Description: Numerous studies have documented the effect of El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on rainfall in many regions of the globe. The question of whether ENSO is the single most important factor in interannual rainfall variability has received less attention, mostly because the kind of data that would be required to make such an assessment were simply not available. Until 1979 the evidence linking El Nino with changes in rainfall around the world came from rain gauges measuring precipitation over land masses and a handful of islands. From 1980 until the launch of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) in November 1997 the remote sensing evidence was confined to ocean rainfall because of the very poor sensitivity of the instruments over land. In this paper we summarize the results of a principal component analysis of TRMM's 60-month (January 1998 to December 2002) global land and ocean remote-sensing record of monthly rainfall accumulations. Contrary to the first principal component of the rainfall itself, the first three indices of the anomaly are most sensitive to precipitation over the ocean rather than over the land. With the help of archived surface station data the first TRMM rain anomaly index is extended back several decades. Comparison of the extended index with the Southern Oscillation Index confirms that the first principal component of the rainfall anomaly is strongly correlated with the ENSO indices.

Description: Effects of multiple scattering on reflectivity are studied for millimeter wavelength weather radars. A time-independent vector theory, including up to second-order scattering, is derived for a single layer of hydrometeors of a uniform density and a uniform diameter. In this theory, spherical waves with a Gaussian antenna pattern are used to calculate ladder and cross terms in the analytical scattering theory. The former terms represent the conventional multiple scattering, while the latter terms cause backscattering enhancement in both the copolarized and cross-polarized components. As the optical thickness of the hydrometeor layer increases, the differences from the conventional plane wave theory become more significant, and essentially, the reflectivity of multiple scattering depends on the ratio of mean free path to radar footprint radius. These results must be taken into account when analyzing radar reflectivity for use in remote sensing.

Description: The Cassini RADAR is a multimode instrument built both by NASA/JPL and ASI/Alenia Spazio. The instrument operates in radiometer-only, scatterometer, altimeter, and imaging modes. This paper will describe this interesting unique radar and how it will be used to collect data at Titan.

Description: The current Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) are equipped to make cloud top measurements only. In contrast, a millimeter-wave radar allows 3-D measurements of precipitation associated with hurricanes and other convective systems.

Description: Effects of multiple scattering on the reflectivity measurement for millimeter-wavelength weather radars are studied, in which backscattering enhancement may play an important role. In the previous works, the backscattering enhancement has been studied for plane wave injection, the reflection of which is received at the infinite distance. In this paper, a finite beam width of a Gaussian antenna pattern along with spherical wave is taken into account. A time-independent second order theory is derived for a single layer of clouds of a uniform density. The ordinary second-order scattering (ladder term) and the second-order backscattering enhancement (cross term) are derived for both the copolarized and cross-polarized waves.

Description: The Cloud Profiling Radar is the key science instrument for the CloudSat Mission to acquire a global data set of vertical atmospheric cloud structure and its variability. CPR is a 94 GHz nadir-looking radar that measures the power backscattered by clouds as a function of distance from the radar. This sensor is expected to provide cloud measurements at a 500-m vertical resolution and a 1.5-km horizontal resolution. CPR will operate in a short pulse mode and will yield measurements at a minimum detectable sensitivity of -28 dBZ.