Abstract
The impact of large atmospheric attenuation events on data quality and availability is a critical aspect for future altimetry missions based on Ka-band altimetry. The SARAL/AltiKa mission and its Ka-band nadir altimeter offer a unique opportunity to assess this impact. Previous publications (Tournadre et al., 2009, 2015) already analyzed the impact of rain on the waveforms at Ka-band and proposed a definition of an elaborate rain flag. This notion tends to give a simpler black and white view of the atmospheric attenuation when the effect on the altimeter measurement is intense. However, in practice, there is a continuum of measurements that may be partially distorted or corrupted by rain events. The present study proposes a wider point of view, directly using the timeseries of the Ka-band altimeter backscattering coefficient for the first time, when previous studies relied on microwave radiometer (MWR) observations or model analyses with coarser resolutions. As guidelines for future Ka-band missions concerning the impact of the atmosphere, the Attenuation CElls Characterization ALgorithm (ACECAL) approach not only provides more representative statistics on rain cells (occurrences, amplitude, size), but also describes the internal structure of the cells. The actual atmospheric attenuation retrieved with ACECAL is about four times larger than the attenuation retrieved from the MWR. At a global scale, 1% of the measurements are affected by an attenuation larger than 23 dB and 10% of the atmospheric attenuation events have a size larger than 40 km. At regional scale, some areas of particular interest for oceanography as Gulf Stream, North Pacific and Brazil currents are more systematically affected compared with global statistics, with atmospheric attenuation up to 8 dB and cell size larger than 25 km when rain occurs. This study also opens some perspectives on the benefits that the community could be drawn from the systematic distribution of the rain cells parameters as secondary products of altimetry missions.
Highlights
The impact of large atmospheric attenuation events on data quality and availability is a critical aspect for future altimetry missions based on Ka-band altimetry
(12 km for microwave radiometer (MWR) on-board SARAL/AltiKa), a new approach is proposed here, based on the 40 Hz σ0, to characterize the impact of rain cells onto the measurements and anticipate the availability of the observations performed by future twodimensional swath Ka band altimeters
The Attenuation CElls Characterization ALgorithm (ACECAL) approach combines low-filtering and non-linear fit to retrieve the amplitude of the atmospheric attenuation at the Ka band, the size and the occurrences of rain cells
Summary
The atmospheric attenuation (hereafter referred as ∆σ0 ) is the sum of a dry component depending on pressure (p) and temperature (t), a wet component ∆σ0wet proportional dry. The mean chord of the RCCD and the mean diameter of the RCDD are proportional, with a factor of π2 , assuming circular-shaped rain cells This relation is useful to translate one-dimensional information as provided by SARAL/AltiKa to two-dimensional cases that will be encountered by the future SWOT mission, even if the actual shape of rain cells is more likely to be elliptical over ocean [22] or even without any particular shape [16]. The statistics of rain rates and cells sizes provided by [23] are mostly confirmed by the existing literature, but with some limitations compared with the current proposed approach, being (1) the spatial resolution of the Topex and Jason-1 altimeters were coarser than for AltiKa, (2) the study was based on 1 Hz measurements (separated by 6 km) and (3) the Ku band is seven times less sensitive to rain than the Ka band. The following section describes the new algorithm used to characterize attenuation cells directly from the Ka band SARAL/AltiKa altimeter from the 40 Hz Ka band σ0 timeseries
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