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Rainfall Characteristics in the Tropical Oceans: Observations using TRMM TMI and PR

열대강우관측(TRMM) 위성의 TMI와 PR에서 관측된 열대해양에서의 강우 특성

  • Seo, Eun-Kyoung (Department of Earth Science Education, Kongju National University)
  • 서은경 (공주대학교 지구과학교육과)
  • Received : 2011.10.18
  • Accepted : 2011.12.08
  • Published : 2012.04.30
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Abstract

The estimations of the surface rain intensity and rain-related physical variables derived from two independent Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite sensors, TRMM Microwave Imager (TMI) and Precipitation Radar (PR), were compared over four different oceans. The precipitating clouds developed most frequently in the warmest sea surface temperature (SST) region of the west Pacific, which is 1.5 times more frequent than in the east Pacific and the tropical Atlantic oceans. However, the east Pacific exhibited the most intense rain intensity for the convective and mixed rain types while the tropical Atlantic showed the most intense rain intensity for all TMI rainy pixels. It was found that the deviation of TMI-derived rain rate yielded a big difference in region-to-region and rain type-to-type if the PR rain intensity value is assumed to be closer to the truth. Furthermore, the deviation by rain types showed opposite signs between convective and non-convective rain types. It was found that the region-to-region deviation differences reached more than 200% even though the selected tropical oceans have relatively similar geophysical environments. Therefore, the validation for the microwave rain estimation needs to be performed according to both rain types and climate regimes, and it also requires more sophisticated TMI algorithm which reflects the locality of rainfall characteristics.

열대강우관측(TRMM) 위성에 탑재된 두 독립적인 기기인 마이크로파 센서(TMI)와 강수레이더(PR)를 통해 추정된 지표에서의 강우강도와 강수 관련 변수들을 네 개의 주요 열대해양에서 비교하였다. 해수면의 온도가 가장 높은 서태평양에서 가장 많은 강수구름이 발생하며, 이는 동태평양과 대서양 보다 1.5배 많은 빈도수이다. 반면 대류형과 혼합형에서 동태평양이 가장 강한 강우강도를 나타냈으며, 전체 강수 화소에 대해서는 대서양이 가장 강한 강우강도를 보였다. 한편 PR의 강우강도를 참값으로 볼 때 TMI의 강우강도의 편향은 강수유형과 지역에 따라 그 크기가 매우 다르게 나타났다. 더욱이 강수유형별 편향은 서로 다른 부호를 보였다. 특히 이 연구에서 선정한 열대해양들은 비교적 유사한 지구물리적 환경을 가지고 있지만, 그 편향의 크기가 지역에 따라 2배 이상의 차이가 일어났다. 따라서 마이크로파로부터 추정된 강수량에 대한 검증은 강수유형별 및 지역적으로 수행되어야 하며, 또한 국지적 강수 특성을 고려한 보다 정교한 TMI 알고리즘의 개발 및 개선이 필요함을 의미한다.

Keywords

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