With the unprecedented spaceborne precipitation radar(PR),the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission(TRMM) satellite has collected high-quality precipitation measurements for over ten years.The TRMM/PR data are nowadays extensively exploited in numerous meteorological and hydrological fields.Yet an artificial orbit boost of the TRMM satellite in August 2001 modulated the observation parameters,which inevitably affects climatological applications of the PR data and needs to be clarified.This study investigates the orbit boost effects of the TRMM satellite on the PR-derived precipitation characteristics.Both the potential impacts on precipitation frequency(PF) and precipitation intensity(PI) are carefully analyzed.The results show that the total PF decreases by 8.3% and PI increases by 4.0% over the tropics after the orbit boost.Such changes significantly exceed the natural variabilities and imply the strong effects of orbit boost on precipitation characteristics.The impacts on stratiform precipitation and convective precipitation are inconsistent,which is attributed to their distinct precipitation features.Further analysis reveal that the increased PI of stratiform precipitation is mainly due to the decreased frequencies of light precipitation,while the semi-constant PI of convective precipitation is caused by the concurrently decreased frequencies of light and heavy precipitation.A modification is applied to the post-boost PR precipitation data to retrieve the actual trends of tropical precipitation characteristics.It is found that the PI of total-precipitation approximately keeps invariable from 1998 to 2005.The total PF has no obvious trend over tropical oceans but decreases considerably over tropical lands.
Visible and infrared(VIR) measurements and the retrieved cloud parameters are commonly used in precipitation identification algorithms, since the VIR observations from satellites, especially geostationary satellites, have high spatial and temporal resolutions. Combined measurements from visible/infrared scanner(VIRS) and precipitation radar(PR) aboard the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission(TRMM) satellite are analyzed, and three cloud parameters, i.e., cloud optical thickness(COT), effective radius(Re), and brightness temperature of VIRS channel 4(BT4), are particularly considered to characterize the cloud status. By associating the information from VIRS-derived cloud parameters with those from precipitation detected by PR, we propose a new method for discriminating precipitation in daytime called Precipitation Identification Scheme from Cloud Parameters information(PISCP). It is essentially a lookup table(LUT) approach that is deduced from the optimal equitable threat score(ETS) statistics within 3-dimensional space of the chosen cloud parameters. South and East China is selected as a typical area representing land surface, and the East China Sea and Yellow Sea is selected as typical oceanic area to assess the performance of the new scheme. It is proved that PISCP performs well in discriminating precipitation over both land and oceanic areas. Especially, over ocean, precipitating clouds(PCs) and non-precipitating clouds(N-PCs) are well distinguished by PISCP, with the probability of detection(POD) near 0.80, the probability of false detection(POFD) about 0.07, and the ETS higher than 0.43. The overall spatial distribution of PCs fraction estimated by PISCP is consistent with that by PR, implying that the precipitation data produced by PISCP have great potentials in relevant applications where radar data are unavailable.
