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Abstract
Passive microwave measurements from satellites have been used to identify the signature of hail in intense thunderstorms. The scattering signal of hailstones is typically observed as a strong depression of upwelling brightness temperatures from the cloud to the satellite. Although the relation between scattering signal and hail diameter is often assumed linear, in this work a logistic model is used which seems to well approximate the complexity of the radiation extinction process by varying the hail cross-section. A novel probability-based method for hail detection originally conceived for AMSU-B/MHS and now extended to ATMS, GMI, and SSMIS, is presented. The measurements of AMSU-B/MHS were analyzed during selected hailstorms over Europe, South America and the US to quantify the extinction of radiation due to the hailstones and large ice aggregates. To this aim, a probabilistic growth model has been developed. The validation analysis based on 12-year surface hail observations over the US (NOAA official reports) collocated with AMSU-B overpasses have demonstrated the high performance of the hail detection method in distinguishing between moderate and severe hailstorms, fitting the seasonality of hail patterns. The flexibility of the method allowed its experimental application to other microwave radiometers equipped with MHS-like frequency channels revealing a high level of portability.
Highlights
The measurements of Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit-B (AMSU-B)/Microwave Humidity Sounder (MHS) were analyzed during selected hailstorms over Europe, South America and the United States (US) to quantify the extinction of radiation due to the hailstones and large ice aggregates
The validation analysis based on 12-year surface hail observations over the US (NOAA official reports) collocated with AMSU-B overpasses have demonstrated the high performance of the hail detection method in distinguishing between moderate and severe hailstorms, fitting the seasonality of hail patterns
The potential of the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit-B (AMSU-B) and of its successors the Microwave Humidity Sounder (MHS) and the Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS) in characterizing precipitating systems is amply demonstrated in the literature
Summary
The potential of the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit-B (AMSU-B) and of its successors the Microwave Humidity Sounder (MHS) and the Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS) in characterizing precipitating systems is amply demonstrated in the literature. The first studies using passive microwave (PMW) sensors focused on millimeter and submillimeter wave bands (e.g., [22]) It was only with the studies on the response of frequencies around 37 GHz that the signal from hail or large ice hydrometeors within severe storms over land [23,24,25] was first exploited. The method has been validated with surface observations derived from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Storm Official Reports using the same kind of analysis described in [29] showing high statistical scores in hail detection Such high skills in retrieving hail patterns suggested further experiments exploiting the MHS-like frequency channels. The applications to ATMS, GMI and the Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I) revealed very promising results and lead the way to extending the method to all sensors presently in orbit and to future satellite microwave radiometers with operational frequencies in the 150–170 GHz range
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