Adaptive and High-Resolution Estimation of Specific Differential Phase for Polarimetric X-Band Weather Radars

Abstract

ABSTRACTOne of the most beneficial polarimetric variables may be the specific differential phase KDP because of its independence from power attenuation and radar miscalibration. However, conventional KDP estimation requires a substantial amount of range smoothing as a result of the noisy characteristic of the measured differential phase ΨDP. In addition, the backscatter differential phase δhv component of ΨDP, significant at C- and X-band frequency, may lead to inaccurate KDP estimates. In this work, an adaptive approach is proposed to obtain accurate KDP estimates in rain from noisy ΨDP, whose δhv is of significance, at range resolution scales. This approach uses existing relations between polarimetric variables in rain to filter δhv from ΨDP while maintaining its spatial variability. In addition, the standard deviation of the proposed KDP estimator is mathematically formulated for quality control. The adaptive approach is assessed using four storm events, associated with light and heavy rain, observed by a polarimetric X-band weather radar in the Netherlands. It is shown that this approach is able to retain the spatial variability of the storms at scales of the range resolution. Moreover, the performance of the proposed approach is compared with two different methods. The results of this comparison show that the proposed approach outperforms the other two methods in terms of the correlation between KDP and reflectivity, and KDP standard deviation reduction.