Explore the vast range of titles available.

In addition to the only precipitation radar (PR) in space, its passive Microwave Imager (TMI), Visible and Infrared Scanner (VIRS), and Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) provide a powerful overlap of instruments (Kummerow et al. 1998, 2000). With the launch of TRMM, IR, passive microwave, and lightning data could be combined with highresolution radar reflectivity profiles (with 250-m vertical resolution at nadir), opening the door to more quantitative studies of storm structure from space (e.g., Nesbitt et al. 2000; Petersen and Rutledge 2001; Toracinta et al. 2002; Houze 2003; Cecil et al. 2005; Boccippio et al. 2005; Liu and Zipser 2005; Nesbitt et al. 2006).

Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Precipitation Radar (PR), TRMM Microwave Imager (TMI), and Visible and Infrared Scanner (VIRS) observations within the Precipitation Feature (PF) database have been analyzed to examine regional variability in rain area and maximum horizontal extent of rainfall features, and role of storm morphology on rainfall production (and thus modes where vertically integrated heating occurs). Particular attention is focused on the sampling geometry of the PR and the resulting impact on PF statistics across the global Tropics. It was found that 9% of rain features extend to the edge of the PR swath, with edge features contributing 42% of total rainfall. However, the area (maximum dimension) distribution of PR features is similar to the wider-swath TMI up until a truncation point of nearly 30 000 km2 (250 km), so a large portion of the feature size spectrum may be examined using the PR as with past ground-based studies. This study finds distinct differences in land and ocean storm morphology characteristics, which lead to important differences in rainfall modes regionally. A larger fraction of rainfall comes from more horizontally and vertically developed PFs over land than ocean due to the lack of shallow precipitation in both relative and absolute frequency of occurrence, with a trimodal distribution of rainfall contribution versus feature height observed over the ocean. Mesoscale convective systems (MCSs) are found to be responsible for up to 90% of rainfall in selected land regions. Tropicswide, MCSs are responsible for more than 50% of rainfall in almost all regions with average annual rainfall exceeding 3 mm day−1. Characteristic variability in the contribution of rainfall by feature type is shown over land and ocean, which suggests new approaches for improved convective parameterizations.

The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite measurements from the precipitation radar and TRMM microwave imager have been combined to yield a comprehensive 3-yr database of precipitation features (PFs) throughout the global Tropics (±36° latitude). The PFs retrieved using this algorithm (which number nearly six million Tropicswide) have been sorted by size and intensity ranging from small shallow features greater than 75 km² in area to large mesoscale convective systems (MCSs) according to their radar and ice scattering characteristics. This study presents a comprehensive analysis of the diurnal cycle of the observed precipitation features’ rainfall amount, precipitation feature frequency, rainfall intensity, convective–stratiform rainfall portioning, and remotely sensed convective intensity, sampled Tropicswide from space. The observations are sorted regionally to examine the stark differences in the diurnal cycle of rainfall and convective intensity over land and ocean areas. Over the oceans, the diurnal cycle of rainfall has small amplitude, with the maximum contribution to rainfall coming from MCSs in the early morning. This increased contribution is due to an increased number of MCSs in the nighttime hours, not increasing MCS areas or conditional rain rates, in agreement with previous works. Rainfall from sub-MCS features over the ocean has little appreciable diurnal cycle of rainfall or convective intensity. Land areas have a much larger rainfall cycle than over the ocean, with a marked minimum in the midmorning hours and a maximum in the afternoon, slowly decreasing through midnight. Non-MCS features have a significant peak in afternoon instantaneous conditional rain rates (the mean rain rate in raining pixels), and convective intensities, which differs from previous studies using rain rates derived from hourly rain gauges. This is attributed to enhancement by afternoon heating. MCSs over land have a convective intensity peak in the late afternoon, however all land regions have MCS rainfall peaks that occur in the late evening through midnight due to their longer life cycle. The diurnal cycle of overland MCS rainfall and convective intensity varies significantly among land regions, attributed to MCS sensitivity to the varying environmental conditions in which they occur.

Thunderstorms in southeastern South America (SESA) stand out in satellite observations as being among the strongest on Earth in terms of satellite-based convective proxies, such as lightning flash rate per storm, the prevalence for extremely tall, wide convective cores and broad stratiform regions. Accurately quantifying when and where strong convection is initiated presents great interest in operational forecasting and convective system process studies due to the relationship between convective storms and severe weather phenomena. This paper generates a novel methodology to determine convective initiation (CI) signatures associated with extreme convective systems, including extreme events. Based on the well-established area-overlapping technique, an adaptive brightness temperature threshold for identification and backward tracking with infrared data is introduced in order to better identify areas of deep convection associated with and embedded within larger cloud clusters. This is particularly important over SESA because ground-based weather radar observations are currently limited to particular areas. Extreme rain precipitation features (ERPFs) from Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission are examined to quantify the full satellite-observed life cycle of extreme convective events, although this technique allows examination of other intense convection proxies such as the identification of overshooting tops. CI annual and diurnal cycles are analyzed and distinctive behaviors are observed for different regions over SESA. It is found that near principal mountain barriers, a bimodal diurnal CI distribution is observed denoting the existence of multiple CI triggers, while convective initiation over flat terrain has a maximum frequency in the afternoon.

An event-based method of analyzing the measurements from multiple satellite sensors is presented by using observations of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) precipitation radar (PR), Microwave Imager (TMI), Visible and Infrared Scanner (VIRS), and Lightning Imaging System (LIS). First, the observations from PR, VIRS, TMI, and LIS are temporally and spatially collocated. Then the cloud and precipitation features are defined by grouping contiguous pixels using various criteria, including surface rain, cold infrared, or microwave brightness temperature. The characteristics of measurements from different sensors inside these features are summarized. Then, climatological descriptions of many properties of the identified features are generated. This analysis method condenses the original information of pixel-level measurements into the properties of events, which can greatly increase the efficiency of searching and sorting the observed historical events. Using the TRMM cloud and precipitation feature database, the regional variations of rainfall contribution by features with different size, intensity, and PR reflectivity vertical structure are shown. Above the freezing level, land storms tend to have larger 20-dBZarea and reach higher altitude than is the case for oceanic storms, especially those land storms over central Africa. Horizontal size and the maximum reflectivity of oceanic storms decrease with altitude. For land storms, these intensity measures increase with altitude between 2 km and the freezing level and decrease more slowly with altitude above the freezing level than for ocean storms.

Characteristics of over 15 000 tropical cyclone (TC) inner cores are evaluated coincidentally using 37- and 85-GHz passive microwave data to quantify the relative prevalence of cold clouds (i.e., deep convection and stratiform clouds) versus predominantly warm clouds (i.e., shallow cumuli and cumulus congestus). Results indicate greater presence of combined liquid and frozen hydrometeors associated with cold clouds within the atmospheric column for TCs undergoing subsequent rapid intensification (RI) or intensification. RI episodes compared to the full intensity change distribution exhibit approximately an order of magnitude increase for inner-core cold cloud frequency relative to warm cloud presence. Incorporation of an objective ring detection algorithm shows the robust presence of rings associated with hydrometeors for 85-GHz polarization corrected temperatures ( ) and 37-GHz vertically polarized brightness temperatures ( ) for differentiating RI with significance levels ≥99.99%, while 37-GHz false color rings of a combined cyan and pink appearance surrounding a region that is not cyan or pink lack statistical significance for discriminating RI against lesser intensification. Rings of depressed and enhanced tied to RI suggest the combined presence of liquid and frozen hydrometeors within the atmospheric column, indicative of cold clouds. The rings also exhibit preferences for those with collocated more widespread ice scattering signatures to be more commonly associated with RI and general intensification.

The Remote sensing of Electrification, Lightning, And Meso-scale/micro-scale Processes with Adaptive Ground Observations (RELAMPAGO) and the Cloud, Aerosol, and Complex Terrain Interactions Experiment Proposal (CACTI) field campaigns provided an unprecedented thirteen-disdrometer dataset in Central Argentina during the Intensive (IOP, 15 November to 15 December 2018) and Extended (EOP, 15 October 2018 to 30 April 2019) Observational Periods. The drop size distribution (DSD) parameters and their variability were analyzed across the region of interest, which was divided into three subregions characterized by the differing proximity to the Sierras de Córdoba (SDC), in order to assess the impact of complex terrain on the DSD parameters. A rigorous quality control of the data was first performed. The frequency distributions of DSD-derived parameters were analyzed, including the normalized intercept parameter (logNw), the mean volume diameter (D0), the mean mass diameter (Dm), the shape parameter (μ), the liquid water content (LWC), and the rain rate (R). The region closest to the SDC presented higher values of logNw, lower D0, and higher μ, while the opposite occurred in the farthest region, i.e., the concentration of small drops decreased while the concentration of bigger drops increased with the distance to the east of the SDC. Furthermore, the region closest to the SDC showed a bimodal distribution of D0: the lower values of D0 were associated with higher values of logNw and were found more frequently during the afternoon, while the higher D0 were associated with lower logNw and occurred more frequently during the night. The data were analyzed in comparison to the statistical analysis of Dolan et al. 2018 and sorted according to the classification proposed in the cited study. The logNw-D0 and LWC-D0 two-dimensional distributions allowed further discussion around the applicability of other mid-latitude and global precipitation classification schemes (startiform/convection) in the region of interest. Finally, three precipitation case studies were analyzed with supporting polarimetric radar data in order to relate the DSD characteristics to the precipitation type and the microphysical processes involved in each case.

To investigate processes related to the interaction of topography and precipitation, a tropics‐wide (±36° latitude) high resolution (0.1°) ten year (1998–2007) rainfall climatology is presented from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) precipitation radar (PR) using algorithm 2A25 version 6 near‐surface rain. We observe a tight coupling between precipitation and topography with distinct precipitation‐topography relationships present in northwest South America and South Asia. An error model is developed by subsampling the TRMM Multi‐satellite Precipitation Analysis as sampled by the PR. The error model predicts observed sampling error as a function of resolution, rain rate and sampling frequency with an r2 of 0.82. This error model indicates that the precipitation climatology at 0.1° resolution does resolve precipitation gradients in regions with large average daily rain totals including the Andes, Western Ghats, and Himalaya.

Cold cloud features (CCFs) are defined by grouping six full years of Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) infrared pixels with brightness temperature at 10.8-μm wavelength (T B11) less than or equal to 210 and 235 K. Then the precipitation radar (PR)-observed precipitation area and reflectivity profiles inside CCFs are summarized and compared with the area and minimum temperature of the CCFs. Comparing the radar with the infrared data, significant regional differences are found, quantified, and used to describe regional differences in selected properties of deep convective systems in the Tropics. Inside 4 million CCFs, 35% (57%) of cold cloud area withT B11≤ 235 K (210 K) have rain detected by the PR near the surface. Only ~1% of the area of TB11≤ 210 K have 20 dbZreaching 14 km. CCFs colder than 210 K occur most frequently over the west Pacific Ocean, but 20-dbZechoes extending above 10 km in this region are disproportionately rare by comparison to many continental regions. Ratios of PR-detected raining area to area ofT B11≤ 235 K are higher over central Africa, Argentina, and India than over tropical oceans. After applying these ratios to the climatological Global Precipitation Index (GPI) tropical rainfall estimates, the regional distribution is more consistent with the rainfall retrieval from the PR. This suggests that the discrepancy between GPI- and PR-retrieved rainfall can be partly explained with the nonraining anvil. Categorization of CCFs based on the minimumT B11, size of CCFs, and 20-dbZheights demonstrates that 20-dbZechoes above 17 km occur most frequently over land, while the coldest clouds occur most frequently over the west Pacific. The vertical distances between the cloud-top heights determined fromT B11and PR 20-dbZecho-top heights are smaller over land than over ocean and may be considered as another proxy for convective intensity.

Microwave remote sensing of tropical cyclones undergoing rapid intensification (RI; ΔV 30 kt/24 h) reveals structural differences from storms of lesser intensification rates; with 85 GHz signatures depicting a moderately intense convective ring surrounding the storm center. Overpass composites binned by wind shear magnitude show the ring is consistent for low shear RI storms, forming approximately 6 h before RI begins, then contracting and intensifying over the following 24 h. High shear RI events make up a smaller portion of all cases, with little evidence of a convective ring. With the majority of RI cases occurring in low shear, microwave observations of convective axisymmetry prior to RI onset may hold promise for its forecast, with an observed lag between the structural and heating modification and resultant intensification. Given the potential for destruction to vulnerable coastal interests and the current poor predictability of RI, any increase in RI forecast skill would be of great benefit to society. Key Points Routinely available microwave satellite observations may predict RI The evolution of RI structure depends on wind shear surrounding the storm The existence of these features precede the wind response by as much as 6 hours