Performance and Uncertainty Analysis of Precipitation Estimates Derived from Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar onboard GPM over CONUS

The long-expected Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Mission has been launched on February 27, 2014. The core sensors dual-frequency precipitation radar (DPR) is of the state-of- the-art sensor that observes the precipitation over the globe. The DPP level 2 product provides the precipitation rate as well as the phases of the precipitation. The precipitation phase information can help advance our understanding the water and hydrological cycle especially the high-altitude and high latitude region where the solid precipitation is the most important source of water in these regions. However, up-to-date there is not systematic evaluation of the performance of DPR in precipitation estimation at regional and global scale. Evaluation and uncertainty analysis of DPR's performance in precipitation estimation is still needed in satellite precipitation communities. In this paper, the NOAA/NSSL Multi-Radar Multi-Sensor System (MRMS/Q3) provide high spatial and temporal resolution (1km/2min) radar only product (Q3Rad) and 1km/hourly gauge-corrected product (Q3RadGC). Q3RadGC will be used to conduct the bias adjustment to the 1km/2min radar only Q3 (Q3Rad) to obtain 1km/2min gauge-corrected Q3 product (Q3RadGC2min). Then the Q3RadGC2min was used to systematically assess the performance of DPR over the CONUS from June 2014 through May of 2015. The system and random errors of DPR will be analyzed as a function of the precipitation rate and precipitation type (liquid and solid). The evaluation results offer the insights into the performance of DPR in quantifying precipitation, and provide the DPR precipitation algorithm developers as well as the GPM QPE users with references.