Researchers: Ralph Ferraro, Chi Quinn, and Daniel Cecil
Previous work by Cecil (2009) and Cecil and Blankenship (2011) found a strong correlation between passive microwave measurements at 37 and 85 GHz and hail events over land; these studies used measurements from the TMI and AMSR-E sensors. They established climatologies of hail that appeared to agree well with round based data.
The physical basis is that microwave energy is scattered by ice particles, thus greatly reducing the measurement brightness temperature (TB); “Mie” scattering occurs when the ice particles are of similar magnitude to the wavelength – ~ 1 cm at 37 GHz; ~3 mm at 89 GHz; ~ 1 mm at 150 GHz (Figure 1).
In this study, we attempt to extend this work to the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU) and the Microwave Humidity Sounder (MHS) on board the NOAA and EUMETSAT polar orbiting satellites.
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