Case study on the Accuracy Assessment of the rainrate from the Precipitation Radar of TRMM Satellite over Korean Peninsula

The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission(TRMM) is a United States-Japan project for rain measurement from space. The first spaceborne Precipitation Radar(PR) has been installed aboard the TRMM satellite. The ground based validation of the TRMM satellite observations was conducted by TRMM science team through a Global Validation Program(GVP) consisted of 10 or more ground validation sites throughout the tropics. However, TRMM radar should always be validated and assessed against reference data to be used in Korean Peninsula because the rainrates measured with satellite varies by time and space. We have analyzed errors in the comparison of rainrates measured with the TRMM/PR and the ground-based instrument i.e. Automatic Weather System(AWS) by means of statistical methods. Preliminary results show that the near surface rainrate of TRMM/PR are highly correlated with ground measurements especially for the very deep convective rain clouds, though the correlation is changed according to the type and amount of precipitating clouds. Results also show that TRMM/PR instrument is inclined to underestimate the rainrate on the whole over Korea than the AWS measurement for the cases of heavy rainfall.