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Title: How Much Attenuation Extinguishes mm-Wave Vertically Pointing Radar Return Signals?

Journal Article · · Remote Sensing
DOI:https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14061305· OSTI ID:1856805
ORCiD logo [1]
  1. Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO (United States)
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Vertically pointing radars (VPRs) operating at millimeter wavelengths measure the power return from raindrops enabling precipitation retrievals as a function of height. However, as the rain rate increases, there are combinations of rain rate and rain path length that produce sufficient attenuation to prevent the radar from detecting raindrops all the way through rain shafts. This study explores the question: Which rain rate and path length combinations completely extinguish radar return signals for VPRs operating between 3 and 200 GHz? An important step in these simulations is converting attenuated radar reflectivity factor into radar received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in order to determine the range where the SNR drops below the receiver detection threshold. Configuring the simulations to mimic a U.S. Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Mission (ARM) W-band (95 GHz) radar deployed in Brazil, the simulation results indicate that a W-band radar could observe raindrops above 3.5 km only when the rain rate was less than approximately 4 mm h-1. The deployed W-band radar measurements confirm the simulation results with maximum observed heights ranging between 3 and 4.5 km when a surface disdrometer measured 4 mm h-1 rain rate (based on 25-to-75 percentiles from over 25,000 W-band radar profiles). In summary, this study contributes to our understanding of how rain and atmospheric gas attenuation impacts the performance of millimeter-wave VPRs and will help with the design and configuration of multi-frequency VPRs deployed in future field campaigns.

Research Organization:
Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Data Center; Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER); USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER). Earth and Environmental Systems Science Division
Contributing Organization:
PNNL; BNL; ANL; ORNL
Grant/Contract Number:
SC0021345
OSTI ID:
1856805
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1963095
Journal Information:
Remote Sensing, Vol. 14, Issue 6; ISSN 2072-4292
Publisher:
MDPICopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
T-matrix particle scattering
raindrop backscattering cross-section
extinction cross-section
raindrop size distribution
attenuation
specific attenuation
T-matrix particle scattering
raindrop backscattering cross-section
extinction cross-section
raindrop size distribution
attenuation
specific attenuation