Towards the Next Generation of Spaceborne Cloud and Precipitation Radars (Invited Presentation)

Owing to the immense success of the TRMM and CloudSat radars, several new spaceborne atmospheric radars, including the GPM Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR), the EarthCARE Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR), have been developed and will be launched in upcoming years. These second-generation radars promise to deliver measurements at better resolutions and sensitivities, and the EarthCARE CPR will even be demonstrating the vertical Doppler measurement capability.

In conjunction with the development of these second-generation spaceborne atmospheric radars, and with the rapid advancement of radar and other related technologies in recent years, a number of new instrument ideas and concepts for the third generation of spaceborne atmospheric radars have emerged. For example, cloud and precipitation radars that operate at multiple frequencies (e.g., Ku-, Ka- and W-band simultaneously), and provide scanning, polarimetric and Doppler capabilities, as well as Doppler-capable millimeter-wave weather radars for geostationary orbiting satellites, are now being defined and developed. By leveraging the TRMM and CloudSat experience, these new instrument concepts are intended to fill the current observational gaps in the advancement of weather and climate models.

This talk will provide an overview of some of these emerging radar concepts, as well as the critical enabling technologies behind these concepts.