Characteristics of Satellite Brightness Temperature and Rainfall Intensity over the Life Cycle of Convective Cells-Case Study

Abstract

This study investigates the characteristics of satellite brightness temperature (TB) and rainfall intensity over the life cycle of convective cells. The convective cells in the three event cases are detected and tracked from the growth stage to the dissipation stage using the half-hourly infrared (IR) images. For each IR images the values of minimum, mean, and variance for the convective cell's TBs and the sizes of convective cells are calculated and also the relationship between TB and rainfall intensity are investigated, which is obtained using the pixel values of satellite TB and the ground rainfall intensity measured by AWS (Automatic Weather Station). At the growth stage of the convective cells, the TB's variance and cloud size consistently increased, whereas TB's minimum and mean consistently decreased. At this stage the empirical relationships between TB and rainfall intensity are statistically significant and their slopes (intercepts) in absolute values are relatively large (small) compared to those at the dissipation stage. At the dissipation stage of the convective cells, the variability of TB distributions shows the opposite trend. The statistical significance of the empirical relationships are relatively weak, but their slopes (intercepts) vary over life cycle. These results indicate that satellite IR images can provide valuable information in identifying the convective cell's maturity stage and in the growth stage, they may be used in providing considerably accurate rainfall estimates.