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Summary: Development of precipitation retrievals at millimeter and
sub-millimeter wavelengths for geostationary satellites
E. Defer,1
C. Prigent,1
F. Aires,2
J. R. Pardo,3
C. J. Walden,4
O.-Z. Zanife´,5
J.-P. Chaboureau,6
and J.-P. Pinty6
Received 19 March 2007; revised 19 September 2007; accepted 14 December 2007; published 23 April 2008.
[1] We study the potential of millimeter and sub-millimeter wavelengths for precipitation
retrieval from geostationary sensors based on mesoscale cloud modeling and radiative
transfer computation. Hydrometeor profiles simulated with the Meso-NH cloud resolving
model for five European midlatitude situations are used to compute the brightness
temperatures at frequencies from 23.8 to 875 GHz with the Atmospheric Transmission at
Microwaves (ATM). Performances of both rain detection and rain rate retrieval are
analyzed for different frequency sets, over ocean and land separately, and compared to the
user requirements. The performances of a frequency set such as that already planned
for geostationary satellites (with channels in the O2 lines at 50, 118, and 424 GHz, and in
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