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Adachi, A., T. Kobayashi, and H. Yamauchi, 2015: Estimation of raindrop size distribution and rainfall rate from polarimetric radar measurements at attenuating frequency based on the self-consistency principle. J. Meteor. Soc. Japan, 93, 359-388.
https://doi.org/10.2151/jmsj.2015-020

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Highlights:

• This study proposes a new method for estimating raindrop size distribution (DSD) and rainfall rate (R) from polarimetric radar at attenuating frequency.
• Since the proposed algorithm retrieves the co-polar (A_H) and differential specific attenuation (A_DP) from the interrelation among the polarimetric measurements, it needs no external reference data such as 2DVD measurements for attenuation corrections.
• In addition, this method corrects not only the systematic bias in Z measurements but also the bias due to the wet radome by matching the theoretical Φ_DP value estimated from Z and Z_DR (red line in Fig. 4) with the observed value (black line) using an expanded version of an autocalibration technique (blue line: original technique) proposed by Goddard et al. (1994).
• The evaluation of the algorithm showed that the retrieved three DSD parameters of raindrops, R, Z, and Z_DR from actual C-band polarimetric radar data (black closed circles in Fig. 8) have fairly good agreement with those obtained by surface measurements (blue line).