Comparison of Reflectivity Profiles between TRMM-PR and Operational Radar Network Mosaic over South Korea

Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission Precipitation Radar (TRMM-PR) is the only spaceborne radar that directly observes vertical distributions of precipitation. It overpasses the southern part of the Korean Peninsula where i) a dense network of operational S-band radars is available and ii) various types of precipitation occur. The ground validation of TRMM products is of interest in better understanding and providing technologies for the upcoming Global Precipitation Mission (GPM) and in rainfall monitoring and hydrometeorological forecast applications.

Although the true rainfall is not known, we can utilize volumetric reflectivity measured from the network of ground radars (GR) to understand better the quality of TRMM-PR algorithms and products. Hence, this presentation will show some statistical comparisons between PR and GR for several selected situations (including widespread precipitation, isolated convection, and typhoon events), specially focusing on the ability of PR and GR to capture the vertical structure of the precipitation field. Also, the work analyses the effect of strong gradients in the precipitation field (frequently known as the non-uniform beam filling effect) to better understand the representativeness of PR fields affected by precipitation systems of different scales.