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Investigation on the weather radar equation at attenuating wavelength

Frank S. Marzano,G. Ferrauto-2002-01-01
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TL;DRAbstract

The classical weather radar equation is here gen- eralized to include a range-bin extinction effect due to rain- fall path attenuation within each range bin. It is shown that only in the case of low-to-moderate attenuating media, the derived range-bin extinction factor is, by definition, closed to one so that the classical radar equation can be used. These theoretical results are also obtained by using a microwave radiative transfer approach. Within the assumption of first- order scattering, a new definition of the radar reflectivity (in terms of backscattered specific intensity) yields the same generalized radar equation. Numerical results confirm that the effect of the range-bin extinction factor, depending on frequency and range resolution, can be significant at X band for intense rain, while at Ka band and above even for moder- ate rain.

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The classical weather radar equation is here gen- eralized to include a range-bin extinction effect due to rain- fall path attenuation within each range bin. It is shown that only in the case of low-to-moderate attenuating media, the derived range-bin extinction factor is, by definition, closed to one so that the classical radar equation can be used. These theoretical results are also obtained by using a microwave radiative transfer approach. Within the assumption of first- order scattering, a new definition of the radar reflectivity (in terms of backscattered specific intensity) yields the same generalized radar equation. Numerical results confirm that the effect of the range-bin extinction factor, depending on frequency and range resolution, can be significant at X band for intense rain, while at Ka band and above even for moder- ate rain.

Keywords

BinRadarAttenuationRange of a projectileWeather radarRemote sensingRange (aeronautics)Radiative transfer

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