INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN OCEANOGRAPHY (ITO-98) GOA, INDIA 12-16 OCTOBER 1998

 The satellite remote sensing of sea surface is mainly carried out with microwave instruments both active and passive. The rainfall is the main source of obstruction in the satellite observations of sea surface in microwave regime beyond 10 GHz. Thus the knowledge and precise estimation of rainfall are important not only to flag the rain corrupted observations but also for their possible correction. For oceanographic community, the importance of rainfall is felt through its effect on density of the ocean surface. The rain is found to isolate near surface layer from thermocline, and thus reduce vertical advection and entrainment. In some regions of the oceans the salinity variations caused by rainfall produce horizontal gradients of density, which in turn produce ocean currants. For these reasons, the rainfall is considered as an important activity under on going World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE).

A Three Frequency (18, 21 and 37 GHz) nadir looking microwave radiometer (TMR) on board TOPEX/Poesidon satellite is primarily designed for wet tropospheric correction to altimetric measurements. Varma et al. (1997) have made non-conventional use of this spaceborne nadir looking radiometer for rain rate estimation over oceans.

In this paper, the TOPEX microwave radiometer derived global monthly rain rate estimations with the algorithm of Varma et al. (1997) for entire year of 1993 are presented. A comparison of TMR derived rain estimates with similar estimates using dual polarized 7-channel SSM/1 measurements is also done. The usefulness of TMR rain rate estimation is discussed with special reference to Indian S-W monsoon and other tropical weather systems.

Ref.: Varma, A.K., Gairola, R.M., Kishtawal, C.M., Pandey, P.C., and Singh, K.P., 1997, Rain Rate estimation from nadir looking microwave. Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Remote Sensing and Geosciences.

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Copyright© National Institute Of Oceanography, Goa,India,1998
updated on 7th July'98