Convection in Amazonia during the TRMM-LBA

The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission - Large Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (TRMM-LBA) was conducted near Ji Parana, Rondonia, Brazil during the 1999 Amazonian wet season (Jan-Feb). TRMM-LBA provided detailed observations of precipitating systems from surface and aircraft instrumentation which may be compared to measurements from the TRMM satellite. The surface-based platforms included two scanning Doppler radars (the NASA TOGA C-band radar and the NCAR SPOL S-band dual-polarization radar) which collected continuous dual-Doppler measurements of precipitating convection. The main goal of the radar component of TRMM-LBA was to improve our understanding of the tropical convections in a continental regime. The TOGA and SPOL radars formed a dual-Doppler network, which provided detailed views of the precipitation structure and the three-dimensional wind field of mesoscale convective systems. Four dense rain gauge clusters were located at various ranges with respect to both radars. In this presentation, we will use the Doppler radar, TRMM satellite, along with the raingauge data to show some preliminary results on rainfall characteristics and structure in a mesoscale convective system during the 1999 Amazonian wet season. The results in this study will be also compared with the earlier related work.