Evidence of trends in rain event size effecting trends in rain fade

Rain gauge studies have shown that the incidence of rain at rates associated with outage on terrestrial links has shown an increasing trend in several countries over the last 30 years. However, no evidence is available from microwave links to show whether outage rates, or the incidence of fade, is similarly increasing. This paper presents evidence of fade trends, derived from a decade of rain radar data. Although a decade is too short a period to observe rain rate trends, evidence is presented that trends in the size of rain events is leading to changes in the relationship between point rain rates and rain fade. Furthermore, these trends are shown to vary significantly across the UK. Temporal trends in both rain rates and their link to rain fade, make it more difficult to adapt International Telecommunication Union Radiocommunication Reccomendations to a changing climate. Key Points The size of rain events in the UK has changed over a 10 year period In most cases, this change reduces rain fade on links This effect counters the increasing incidence of heavy rain