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Hurricane Imaging Radiometer (HIRAD) tropical rainfall retrievals

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Date Issued:
2019
Abstract/Description:
The Hurricane Imaging Radiometer (HIRAD) is an airborne passive microwave remote sensor, developed to measure wind speed and rain rate in hurricanes. This dissertation concerns the development of a signal processing algorithm to infer tropical rainfall from HIRAD radiance (brightness temperature, Tb) measurements.The basis of the rain rate retrieval algorithm is an improved forward microwave radiative transfer model (RTM) that incorporates the HIRAD multi-antenna-beam geometry, and uses semi-empirical coefficients derived from an airborne experiment that occurred in the Gulf of Mexico off Tampa Bay in 2013. During this flight, HIRAD observed a squall line of thunderstorms simultaneously with an airborne meteorological radar (High Altitude Wind and Rain Profiler, HIWRAP), located on the same airplane. Also, ground based NEXRAD radars from the National Weather Service (located at Tampa and Tallahassee) provided high resolution simultaneous rain rate measurements.Using NEXRAD rainfall as the surface truth input to the HIRAD RTM, empirical rain microwave absorption coefficients were tuned to match the measured brightness temperatures. Also, the collocated HIWRAP radar reflectivity (dBZ) measurements were cross correlated with NEXRAD to derive the empirical HIWRAP radar reflectivity to rain rate relationship. Finally, the HIRAD measured Tbs were input to the HIRAD rain retrieval algorithm to derive estimates of rain rate, which were validated using the independent HIWRAP measurements of rain rate.
Title: Hurricane Imaging Radiometer (HIRAD) tropical rainfall retrievals.
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Name(s): Alasgah, Abdusalam, Author
Jones, W Linwood, Committee Chair
Wahid, Parveen, Committee Member
Mikhael, Wasfy, Committee Member
Gong, Xun, Committee Member
Zec, Josko, Committee Member
University of Central Florida, Degree Grantor
Type of Resource: text
Date Issued: 2019
Publisher: University of Central Florida
Language(s): English
Abstract/Description: The Hurricane Imaging Radiometer (HIRAD) is an airborne passive microwave remote sensor, developed to measure wind speed and rain rate in hurricanes. This dissertation concerns the development of a signal processing algorithm to infer tropical rainfall from HIRAD radiance (brightness temperature, Tb) measurements.The basis of the rain rate retrieval algorithm is an improved forward microwave radiative transfer model (RTM) that incorporates the HIRAD multi-antenna-beam geometry, and uses semi-empirical coefficients derived from an airborne experiment that occurred in the Gulf of Mexico off Tampa Bay in 2013. During this flight, HIRAD observed a squall line of thunderstorms simultaneously with an airborne meteorological radar (High Altitude Wind and Rain Profiler, HIWRAP), located on the same airplane. Also, ground based NEXRAD radars from the National Weather Service (located at Tampa and Tallahassee) provided high resolution simultaneous rain rate measurements.Using NEXRAD rainfall as the surface truth input to the HIRAD RTM, empirical rain microwave absorption coefficients were tuned to match the measured brightness temperatures. Also, the collocated HIWRAP radar reflectivity (dBZ) measurements were cross correlated with NEXRAD to derive the empirical HIWRAP radar reflectivity to rain rate relationship. Finally, the HIRAD measured Tbs were input to the HIRAD rain retrieval algorithm to derive estimates of rain rate, which were validated using the independent HIWRAP measurements of rain rate.
Identifier: CFE0007775 (IID), ucf:52379 (fedora)
Note(s): 2019-12-01
Ph.D.
Engineering and Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Doctoral
This record was generated from author submitted information.
Subject(s): HIRAD -- HIWRAP
NEXRAD
brightness temperature
RTM
rain rate
microwave radiometer
Persistent Link to This Record: http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0007775
Restrictions on Access: public 2019-12-15
Host Institution: UCF

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