Improving Satellite-Based Subhourly Surface Rain Estimates Using Vertical Rain Profile Information

Quantifying time-averaged rain rate, or rain accumulation, on subhourly time scales is essential for various application studies requiring rain estimates. This study proposes a novel idea to estimate subhourly time-averaged surface rain rate based on the instantaneous vertical rain profile observed from low-Earth-orbiting satellites. Instantaneous rain estimates from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Precipitation Radar (PR) are compared with 1-min surface rain gauges in North America and Kwajalein atoll for the warm seasons of 2005–14. Time-lagged correlation analysis between PR rain rates at various height levels and surface rain gauge data shows that the peak of the correlations tends to be delayed for PR rain at higher levels up to around 6-km altitude. PR estimates for low to middle height levels have better correlations with time-delayed surface gauge data than the PR’s estimated surface rain rate product. This implies that rain estimates for lower to middle heights may have skill to estimate the eventual surface rain rate that occurs 1–30 min later. Therefore, in this study, the vertical profiles of TRMM PR instantaneous rain estimates are averaged between the surface and various heights above the surface to represent time-averaged surface rain rate. It was shown that vertically averaged PR estimates up to middle heights (~4.5 km) exhibit better skill, compared to the PR estimated instantaneous surface rain product, to represent subhourly (~30 min) time-averaged surface rain rate. These findings highlight the merit of additional consideration of vertical rain profiles, not only instantaneous surface rain rate, to improve subhourly surface estimates of satellite-based rain products.