A spectral retrieval algorithm has been developed to estimate the latent heating profiles utilizing the TRMM/PR2a25 precipitation profiles. The look-up table referring to the precipitation top height and rain rate is made with a cloud ensemble model. In the first step, we made the look-up table and tested the performance of the spectral algorithm with the TOGA-COARE simulation.

The advantage of this algorithm is that it retrieves the latent heating profiles associated with both shallow convection and anvil with no surface rain as well as deep convection and anvil with surface rain. The tentative results showed that the latent heating profiles reconstructed with the spectral algorithm agree very well with simulated ones in the convective region, but are weaker in the stratiform region. Simulations with data from other field experiments (e.g. GATE) will also be conducted in order to examine the universality of the look-up table.