Early Results of Precipitation Features from Half Year of the GPM Observations

Abstract:

Using the similar principle of the TRMM precipitation feature algorithm (Liu et al. 2008), the precipitation features are defined using half year of the GPM observations by grouping the contiguous raining pixels identified by the precipitation radar and passive microwave radiometers. In addition to the geographical distributions of the precipitation systems and intense convection with global coverage from 65^oS-65^oN, the differences between radar and passive microwave precipitation retrievals are examined in different types of precipitation systems over land and ocean in the tropics and mid-high latitudes respectively. These statistics are compared to the 16-year climatology from TRMM V7 products in tropics. We also examine the differences between diurnal variations of precipitation and convection in tropics and in mid-high latitudes. Due to the process of calibrations of the instruments and the algorithms at the early stage of the mission, these preliminary results have large uncertainties. However, they could provide some guidance to improve the algorithms.