Rainfall estimation improvements using polarization data from Monte Lema C-band weather radar in the southern European alps

摘要

Simple improvements in C-band weather radar data processing are performed based on radar polarimetry. The starting point is the estimation of the differential propagation phase ΦDP from the measured total differential phase ΨDP. The main topics are (ground) clutter removal and quantitative precipitation estimation (QPE). For the former, a new test which checks some polarimetric quantities is added (as a trial) in a pre-existing clutteron-clutter bin classification system For the latter, three ‘state-of-the-art’ ΦDP-based precipitation attenuation correction procedures are considered to correct ZH for precipitation attenuation. In addition, since the specific differential phase KDP proves to be a better rainfall rate estimator in heavy rain, some hybrid formulas R(ZH, KDP) are developed so that they result practically unbiased.