H13B-1075:
Validating The Goddard Convective-Stratiform Heating Algorithm for PMM

Monday, 15 December 2014
Stephen E Lang, Science Systems and Applications, Inc., Lanham, MD, United States, Wei-Kuo Tao, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States, Yukari N Takayabu, AORI/University of Tokyo, Kashiwa, Chiba, Japan, Shoichi Shige, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan, Richard H Johnson, Colorado State Univ, Fort Collins, CO, United States and Paul E Ciesielski, Deptment of Atmoshpheric Science, Department of Atmospheric Science, Fort Collins, CO, United States
Abstract:
RMS errors from 2007 through 2008 are computed between the equivalent rainfall obtained from integrating the cloud heating retrieved by the latest Goddard Convective-Stratiform Heating (CSH) algorithm (i.e., the TRMM 3G31 daily gridded product) and the observed surface rainfall obtained from the TRMM 2B31 Combined Algorithm at various time and space scales as well as for varying rain intensities both over land and ocean areas. RMS errors are significantly reduced by spatial and temporal averaging, noticeably lower over ocean than over land, and decrease with increasing rain intensity. There is a mean global positive heating bias of ~24%, which is much higher over land (~41%) than over ocean (~16%); these biases are reduced to (~5%) globally, ~23% over land and a negative bias of just ~2% over ocean when the residual background heating in far from rain regions is not included.