Airborne experiment of spaceborne rain radar: Attenuation estimation of the Ka-band radar with ground-based multi channel microwave radiometers

This paper focused on the research of attenuation correction method for weather radar observations. Based on the adiabatic liquid water content analyzing method and radiation transfer model (RTM), the total attenuation of atmosphere was estimated by combining the GPS radiosonde atmosphere profile and the brightness temperatures observed by a ground-based multi-channel microwave radiometer. Under clear sky conditions, the brightness temperatures are simulated at 12 channels of the ground based multi-channel microwave radiometer using MWMOD. It is found that when the relative humidity was set to a reasonable value, the liquid water profile can be estimated by using the adiabatic liquid water content analyzing method, while the difference between the model-simulated brightness temperature and the radiometer observation reached a reasonable value. Based on the estimated liquid water content, the path integrated attenuation (PIA) of the ground base radar can be computed. The results show that the PIA computation method suggested in this paper is an effective method to estimate the attenuation of ground based weather radar echoes.