Detection of rain/no-rain condition on the ground is an important for application of radar rainfall algorithms. A radial basis function (RBF) neural network-based scheme for rain/no-rain determination on the ground using vertical profiles of radar data is described in this paper. Evaluation based on WSR-88D radar over central Florida indicates that rain/no-rain condition can be inferred fairly ...

Gravity ventilators rely simply on air buoyancy to extract air and are widely used to exhaust air contaminants and heat from workplaces using minimal energy. They are designed to maximize the exhaust flow rate, but the rain penetration sometimes causes malfunctioning. In this study, the characteristics of rain penetration through a ventilator were examined as a preliminary study to develop a ve...

Though warm rain from low-level liquid clouds contributes significantly to the global precipitation and water cycle, it has been missed or underestimated by satellite remote sensing techniques. IR techniques miss all warm rain because they rely on cloud top temperature. Over land, passive microwave techniques miss all warm rain because they rely on ice scattering at high frequency channel. Over...

Measurements of rain attenuation over an earth-space path at Kolkata (22°34' N, 88°29' E), India, have been carried out since June 2004 by receiving a Ku-band signal from the satellite NSS-6 (geostationary at 95 E). The instantaneous attenuations are estimated from the point rain rates measured with an optical raingauge and using the Simple Attenuation Model (SAM). The estimated values closely ...

One of the main open scientific challenges lasting since a few decades is the compelling need for a substantial improvement of techniques adopted to retrieve precipitation intensities and their duration in time. This is particularly pressing for those precipitation episodes that interest very small areas, where also light rains are often trigger disastrous flooding events. Note that an accurate...

Under normal physiological conditions, leptin and the leptin receptor (ObR) regulate the body weight by balancing food intake and energy expenditure. However, this adipocyte-derived hormone also directs peripheral processes, including immunity, reproduction, and bone metabolism. Leptin, therefore, can act as a metabolic switch connecting the body's nutritional status to high energy consuming pr...

Climate change is causing more frequent and intense storms, and climate models predict this trend will continue, potentially affecting wildlife populations. Since 1960 the number of days with >20 mm of rain increased near Punta Tombo, Argentina. Between 1983 and 2010 we followed 3496 known-age Magellanic penguin (Spheniscus magellanicus) chicks at Punta Tombo to determine how weather impacted t...

The cumulative effects of climate warming on herbivore vital rates and population dynamics are hard to predict, given that the expected effects differ between seasons. In the Arctic, warmer summers enhance plant growth which should lead to heavier and more fertile individuals in the autumn. Conversely, warm spells in winter with rainfall (rain-on-snow) can cause 'icing', restricting access to f...

A Z-R relation is derived using a data set which consists of nine rain events selected from Singapore’s drop size distribution. Rain events are separated into convective and stratiform types of rain using two methods: the Gamache-Houze method, a simple threshold technique, and the Atlas-Ulbrich method. In the Atlas-Ulbrich method, the variability of the rain integral parameters R, Z, Nw, D0 and...