The instantaneous retrieval of precipitation over land by temporal variation at 19 GHz

The primary signal used in all current passive microwave precipitation retrieval algorithms over land is the depression of the instantaneous brightness temperature (TB) caused by ice scattering. This study presents a new methodology to retrieve instantaneous precipitation rate over land by using TB temporal variation (ΔTB) at 19 GHz, which primarily reflects the surface emissivity variation due to the precipitation impact. As a proof-of-concept, we exploit observations from five polar-orbiting satellites over the Southern Great Plains (SGP) of the United States. Results show that ΔTB at 19 GHz correlate well with the instantaneous precipitation rate. Further analysis shows that ΔTB at 19 GHz is better correlated with the precipitation rate when multiple satellite observations are used due to the much shorter re-visit time for a certain location. The retrieved instantaneous precipitation rate over SGP from ΔTB at 19 GHz reasonably agrees with the surface radar observations, with the correlation, the root mean square error and the bias being 0.49, 2.39 mm/hr and 6.54%, respectively. Future work seeks to combine the ice scattering signal at high frequencies and this surface emissivity variation signal at low frequencies to achieve an optimal retrieval performance.