Proceedings of Enhancement of Rain Retrieval from Radar

Since many years Doppler radar profilers are known as valuable tools to retrieve profiles of rain rate and further rain parameters (e.g. Wakasugi et al. (1986)). Applying well established relations for terminal fall velocity, shape and backscatter cross section of rain drops allows to derive rain rate without empirical assumptions. For calculating the backscatter cross section, the flattening of rain drops (see e.g. Pruppacher and Klett (1997)) constitutes a nonnegligible error source.