TRMM

Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission is the first Earth Science mission dedicated to studying tropical and subtropical rainfall

A joint mission between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) designed to measure rainfall for weather and climate research
TRMM is a research satellite designed to improve our understanding of the distribution and variability of precipitation within the tropics as part of the water cycle in the current climate system launch in November 27 1997 TRMM provide critical inputs to tropical cyclone forecasting, numerical weather prediction, & precipitation climatologies

Precipitation that falls within 35 degrees north & 35 degrees south of the equator

Flying at a low orbital altitude of 240 miles (400 kilometers)

Orbit: Circular, non-sun-synchronous, inclination of 35 degrees to the Equator with an

Orbit Altitude: 350 km (1997/11/27 - 2001/8/6); 403 km (2001/8/24 - present)

Instruments Overview
1. Visible Infrared Radiometer (VIRS):: The VIRS is a five-channel, cross-track scanning radiometer operating at 0.63, 1.6, 3.75, 10.8, and 12 um, Provides high resolution observations on cloud coverage, cloud type, and cloud top temperatures Serves as a very indirect indicator of rainfall

Ability to deliniate rainfall

Serve as a transfer standard to other measurements that are made routinely using POES and GOES satellites

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Horizontal Resolution ::: 2 km(nadir)

Swath Width ::: About 833 km

Scan Mode ::: Cross-Track Scan

Looking straight down (nadir), VIRS can pick out individual cloud features as small as 2.4 kilometers

2. The Precipitation Radar

first space borne instrument designed to provide threedimensional maps of storm structure operating at 13.8 GHz that measures the 3-D rainfall distribution over both land & ocean, & define the layer depth of the precipitation ability to provide vertical profiles of the rain & snow from the surface up to a height of about 12 miles (20 kilometers)

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Also gives information on intensity & distribution of the rain, on the rain type, on the storm depth & on the height at which the snow melts into rain estimates of the heat released into the atmosphere at different heights based on these measurements can be used to improve models of the global atmospheric circulation horizontal resolution at the ground of about 5 km & swath width of 247 km able to detect fairly light rain rates down to about 0.7 mm per hour

3.TRMM Microwave Imager (TMI)

passive microwave sensor designed to provide quantitative rainfall information over a wide swath able to quantify the water vapor, the cloud water, and the rainfall intensity in the atmosphere five separate frequencies: 10.7, 19.4, 21.3, 37, 85.5 GHz. And designed to provide a more-linear response for the high rainfall rates common in tropical rainfall TMI has a 878-kilometer wide swath on the surface

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basis for calculating rainfall rates from TMI is Plancks radiation law, which describes how much energy a body radiates given its temperature Water surfaces (oceans & lakes) emit only about one half of microwave energy specified by Plancks law & appear to have about half the real temperature of the surface Water surfaces look very "cold" to a passive microwave radiometer

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Raindrops , appear to have a temperature that equal to their real temperature Land different from oceans in terms of emitted microwave radiation, appearing to have about 90 percent of its real temperature high frequency microwaves (85.5 GHz) measured by TMI strongly scattered by ice present in many raining clouds This reduces the microwave signal at the satellite & offers a contrast against the warm land background

COMPARISON :TMI, PR, VIRS

4.Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) small, highly sophisticated instrument that detects & locates lightning over tropical region is a compact combination of optical & electronic elements including a staring imager capable of locating & detecting lightning within individual storms imager's field of view allows the sensor to observe a point on the Earth or a cloud for 80 seconds, a sufficient time to estimate the flashing rate, which tells researchers whether a storm is growing or decaying

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provides information on cloud characteristics, storm dynamics, and seasonal as well as yearly variability of thunderstorms
studies both day and night cloud-to-ground, cloud-to-cloud and intra-cloud lightning and its distribution around the globe

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Data recorded includes 1. time of a lightning event 2. its radiant energy how bright the lightning flash is 3. an estimate of the lightning location

approximately eight inches in diameter & 14 inches high

supporting electronics package is about the size of a standard typewriter Together, the two modules weigh approximately 46 pounds & use about 25 watts of power

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Lead the way for future geostationary lightning mappers From their stationary position in orbit, these future lightning sensors would provide continuous coverage of the continents future sensors will deliver day and night lightning information to a forecaster's work-station within 30 seconds of occurrence

5.Cloud & (CERES)

Earth

Radiant

Energy

Sensor

CERES measure the energy at the top of atmosphere, as well as estimate energy levels within the atmosphere & at the Earths surface data also used to study the energy exchanged between the Sun; surface and clouds; and space

operated during January - August of 1998, and March 2000, so the available data record is quite brief
Using information from very high resolution cloud imaging instruments on the same spacecraft, CERES determined cloud properties, including cloud-amount, altitude, thickness, & the size of the cloud particles

How current are the TRMM data?

The GES DISC/DAAC receives, under normal circumstances, processed standard orbital/swath data products about 2-3 days after satellite data acquisition. depending on the level of processing required In addition to this ongoing collection of data, archives of older data are maintained

TRMM V7 DATA PROCESSING OVERVIEW

TRMM Ground Validation

Ground Validation (GV) effort which consists of collecting data from ground-based radar, rain gauges, etc.

The data is quality-controlled, and then validation products are produced for comparison with TRMM satellite products
The four primary GV sites are Darwin, Australia Houston, Texas Kwajalein, Republic of the Marshall Islands Melbourne, Florida

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significant effort being supported at NASA Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) & vicinity to provide high quality, long-term measurements of rain rates (via a network of rain gauges collocated with National Weather Service gauges), drop size distributions (DSD) using a variety of instruments, including impact-type Joss Waldvogel, laser-optical Parsivel, two-dimensional video disdrometers Products are produced using techniques developed to carefully control quality of ground radar data sets The products estimate surface rainfall rates, adjusted by qualitycontrolled rain gauge data

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primary radar data quality control (QC) algorithm masks nonprecipitation echoes by use of adjustable echo-height and reflectivity thresholds Additional QC algorithms make use of signal quality and semipermanent ground clutter sources Rain gauge data QC is performed on several automated levels, one of which is a procedure to filter unreliable rain gauge data upon comparison to radar data

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To ensure Ground Validation data products are of the highest possible quality, dependent & independent rain gauge data (when available) are compared with radar estimates via scatterplot analysis Further analyses include time series comparisons of gauge and radar rain rates & detailed study of QC results These efforts have resulted in standard validation data sets, at both instantaneous and monthly time scales The validation data sets are compared to TRMM's satellitebased rain estimates and have helped to establish the accuracy of various TRMM products

Example data from the WSR88D Radar in Melbourne, Florida

Rainfall from TRMM 3B42 V7 DATA

Rainfall from TRMM 3B42 V7 DATA

TRMM OBSERVATIONS

APPLICATIONS:: TRMM

Quicklooks at TRMM Orbits (TMI data) on 29/10/2013

TRMM will fill many gaps in our understanding of rainfall

a. frequency distributions of rainfall intensity and areal coverage

b. the partitioning of rainfall into convective and stratiform categories

c. the vertical distribution of hydrometeors (including the structure and intensity of the stratiform region bright band) d. variation of the timing of heaviest rainfall - particularly nocturnal intensification of large mesoscale convective systems over the oceans, and diurnal intensification of orographically and seabreezed forced systems over land

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e. Madden-Julian oscillation in the western Pacific
f. ENSO over the broader Pacific basin

g. critical onset of large annual circulation regimes, such as the Asian summer monsoon