Improved Rainfall Estimation Based on Corrected Radar Reflectivity in Partial Beam Blockage Area of S-band Dual-Polarization Radar

A correction method of reflectivity in partial beam blockage (PBB) area is suggested, which is based on the combination of digital terrain information and self-consistency principle between polarimetric observation. First, the reflectivity was corrected by adding the radar energy loss estimated from beam blockage simulation using digital elevation model (DEM) and beam propagation geometry in standard atmosphere. The additional energy loss by unexpected obstacles and non-standard beam propagation was estimated by using the coefficient between accumulated reflectivity ($Z_H$) and differences of differential phase shift (${\Phi}_{DP}$) along radial direction. The proposed method was applied to operational S-band dual-polarization radar at Jindo and its performance was compared with those of simulation method and self-consistency method for six rainfall cases. When the accumulated reflectivity and increment of ${\Phi}_{DP}$ along radial direction are too small, the self-consistency method has failed to correct the reflectivity while the combined method has corrected the reflectivity bias reasonably. The correction based on beam simulation showed the underestimation. For evaluation of rainfall estimation, the FBs (FRMSEs) of simulation method and self-consistency principle were -0.32 (0.59) and -0.30 (0.57), respectively. The proposed method showed the lowest FB (-0.24) and FRMSE (0.50). The FB and FMSE were improved by about 18% and by 19% in comparison to those before correction (-0.42 and 0.70). We can conclude that the proposed method can improve the accuracy of rainfall estimation in PBB area.

S밴드 이중편파레이더의 부분 빔 차폐영역 내 반사도 보정을 통한 지상강우추정 개선