Extended Abstract (196K)6.7
Field-campaign radar data collected in the context of the TRMM climatology: Comparisons of observed storm morphology and validation opportunities
Stephen W. Nesbitt, Colorado State University, Ft. Collins, CO; and R. Cifelli, S. A. Rutledge, and E. J. Zipser
One of the challenges of understanding the observed variability of precipitating systems collected during relatively short field campaigns by ground-based radars (with observing periods on the order of months) is to understand how that variability is represented in the intra- and interseasonal "climatology" of precipitating systems. One tool that has been used to derive precipitating feature climatologies is data from the TRMM satellite, whose radar and passive microwave snapshots can be used to create a climatology over longer (monthly to multi-yearly) timescales. Despite obvious differences in the sampling of the two instruments (both temporally and spatially), statistical comparisons of the two datasets gridded to similar resolution allow an opportunity to examine the meteorological representativeness of the storms observed during the field campaigns (particularly in their rainfall and convective intensity and morphology characteristics), and where those storms fit into the statistical distribution of storms using such characteristics. In addition, the regionally colocated datasets offer a statistical validation opportunity for the TRMM precipitation radar products, particularly the attenuation correction and convective-stratiform partitioning algorithm in the PR standard products, both of which have important implications on the accuracy of rainfall and latent heating estimates. This study aims to compare regionally subsetted radar reflectivity statistics derived from the University of Utah 4-year TRMM database with gridded radar reflectivity statistics collected during the following field experiments: the TRMM Kwajalein (KWAJEX) and Large Biosphere Atmosphere (LBA) experiments, as well as the East Pacific Investigation of Climate Processes in the Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere System (EPIC) experiment.
Session 6, TRMM/GPM
Friday, 8 August 2003, 8:00 AM-10:00 AM
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