A new and improved rain rate retrieval algorithm has been developed and recently implemented into NOAA/NESDIS operations. In the algorithm, the cloud ice water path (IWP) and particle effective diameters (De) are first retrieved using 89 and 150 GHz measurements of the NOAA-15 & NOAA-16 Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU) sensor suite. The rain rate is then calculated through a physically-based regression algorithm based on retrieved IWP and De. The combination of the high spatial resolution of the AMSU-B sensor (16 km at nadir), the sensitivity of the 150 GHz measurements to smaller-sized ice particle (than with previous passive microwave sensors), the wide swath width (over 2000 km), and the 6-hour temporal coverage with the two NOAA satellites offer a never-seen-before opportunity to monitor the evolution of rain systems.

In this poster, we'll focus our attention over the continental United States and present examples on a variety of weather systems that occurred in 2001. These will include wintertime storm systems, severe weather systems, and land-falling tropical systems. The evolution of these storms as depicted by 6-hour imagery from the NOAA-15 and -16 satellites will be shown. We will also prepare animations of the storm systems that will be shown on a computer monitor that will supplement the poster. Finally, comparison data sets including conventional synoptic surface reports, NEXRAD imagery, etc. will accompany each storm sequence and an assessment of the AMSU retrievals will be presented.