A Deep-Learning Scheme for Hydrometeor Type Classification Using Passive Microwave Observations

This paper proposes a novel approach for hydrometeor classification using passive microwave observations. The use of passive measurements for this purpose has not been extensively explored, despite being available for over four decades. We utilize the Micro-Wave Humidity Sounder-2 (MWHS-2) to relate microwave brightness temperatures to hydrometeor types derived from the global precipitation measurement’s (GPM) dual-frequency precipitation radar (DPR), which are classified into liquid, mixed, and ice phases. To achieve this, we utilize a convolutional neural network model with an attention mechanism that learns feature representations of MWHS-2 observations from spatial and temporal dimensions. The proposed algorithm classified hydrometeors with 84.7% accuracy using testing data and captured the geographical characteristics of hydrometeor types well in most areas, especially for frozen precipitation. We then evaluated our results by comparing predictions from a different year against DPR retrievals seasonally and globally. Our global annual cycles of precipitation occurrences largely agreed with DPR retrievals with biases being 8.4%, −11.8%, and 3.4%, respectively. Our approach provides a promising direction for utilizing passive microwave observations and deep-learning techniques in hydrometeor classification, with potential applications in the time-resolved observations of precipitation structure and storm intensity with a constellation of smallsats (TROPICS) algorithm development.