Decadal Variations in the Geographical Distributuion of Severe Precipitation Features Selected by the Minimum Polarization Corrected Passive Microwave Brightness Temperatures

This study aims to determine a long-term variation of severe Precipitation Features (PFs) using a variety of satellite products from TRMM (Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission) (2002-2014), GPM (Global Precipitation Measurement) (2015-2021), GCOMW1(Global Precipitation Measurement Constellation) (2013-2021), and F13(1995-2002) Satellite Missions. In the past, the Minimum Polarization Corrected Passive Microwave Brightness Temperature (MinPCT) has been used as a proxy of convective intensity. Here, MinPCTs at 85 GHz and 89 GHz in PFs are used to determine the threshold of the coldest top 1% of PFs from different satellites. Using these thresholds, a climatology of the coldest PFs in the latitude domain of 30^oS to 30^oN are created from each satellite PF dataset. Consistent with the literature, the top 1% coldest PFs occur primarily over the continental land regions specifically Central Africa, the Amazons, and the maritime continent. Then, these climatology’s are normalized by dividing the top 1% of PFs to total number of PFs in the 30^oS 30^oN domain as a percental. The normalized geographical distributions of the coldest PFs are intercompared among different satellites in different time periods spanning 26 years. Preliminary results show a northerly shift of severe PFs in the Central Africa region appearing an expansion of tropical ITCZ with an increase in the Maritime region. To interpret these results, the differences in the diurnal sampling, radiometer sensor sensitivity, and field of view must be considered.