Attenuation Correction of Weather Radar Reflectivity with Arbitrary Oriented Microwave Link

Abstract

To compensate radar reflectivity for attenuation effect, a new method for attenuation correction of the radar reflectivity using arbitrary oriented microwave link (referred henceforth to as ACML) is developed and evaluated. Referring to the measurement of arbitrary oriented microwave link, the ACML method optimizes the ratio of specific attenuation to specific differential phase which is a key parameter in attenuation correction schemes. The proposed method was evaluated using real data of a dual-polarization X-band radar and measurements of two microwave links during two rainstorm events. The results showed that the variation range of the optimized ratio was overall consistent with the results of the previous studies. After attenuation correction with the optimal ratios, the radar reflectivity was significantly compensated, especially at long distances. The corrected reflectivity was more intense than the reflectivity corrected by the “self-consistent” (SC) method and closer to the reflectivity of a nearby S-band radar. The effectiveness of the method was also verified by comparing the rain rates estimated by the X-band radar with those derived by rain gauges. It is demonstrated that arbitrary oriented microwave link can be adopted to optimize the attenuation correction of radar reflectivity.