High-Intensity Precipitation Measurement Using Remote Methods

T. W. Krauss, A. A. Sin’kevich, and A. S. Ghulam

Considered is a case of the cumulonimbus cloud development in the southwestern part of Saudi Arabia with a very high precipitation intensity. The height of the cloud top amounted to 14 km and the radar reflectivity, to 60 dBZ. Carried out is the comparison of remote methods of measuring the intensity of precipitation from the cloud under study: the radar (using the relationship between the reflectivity and precipitation intensity) and satellite IR-radiometric (based on the results of sounding with the SEVERI radiometer installed at the Meteosat-8 satellite) methods. A split-window technique was used for detecting the position of the cloud top from the radiometric observations. The analysis enabled to select the best relationships for estimating the precipitation intensity from the data of radar and satellite measurements. The computations based on these relationships correspond most closely to the ground-based measurements with the precipitation gage.