Recent Improvements to the GOES-R Rainfall Rate Algorithm

The next generation Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-R) Rainfall Rate algorithm will provide instantaneous estimates of rain rate every 15 min with 5-min latency over the entire Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) full disk with a 2-km (at nadir) pixel resolution.

The GOES-R Rainfall Rate algorithm is an effort to combine the relative strengths of infrared (IR)-based and microwave (MW)-based estimates of precipitation. Recent improvements to the algorithm include employing smaller calibration regions for more localized and more accurate calibration; speeding up the calibration code to enable more efficient real-time processing; adding rainfall to warm pixels where neither IR nor MW would normally detect rainfall; employing a relative humidity (RH) correction for subcloud evaporation of hydrometeors; and correcting for thermodynamic profile effects using the computed convective equivalent level (EL) temperature.

This presentation will introduce the basic GOES-R Rainfall Rate algorithm, describe recent improvements and provide the comparisons between the performances of the improved and original algorithms by using a version of the algorithm simplified for the current-generation GOES imager running over the conterminous US.