Polarimetric Measurements and Model Calculations of Downwelling Rain Brightness Temperatures.

Abstract

Polarimetric measurements of sky brightness temperature have been carried out for different time periods together with parallel measurements of rain rate, distrometer data and other meteorological parameters. One convective event and one stratiform event are analysed in this paper, where the main goals are the correlation of brightness temperature and differential brightness temperature with rain rate and drop size distribution. By utilization of the results of radiative transfer calculations, an algorithm has been developed to derive an effective (path integrated) two-parameter drop size distribution from polarimetric radiometer measurements.