1. Orbital-Radar v1.0.0: A tool to transform suborbital radar observations to synthetic EarthCARE cloud radar data.
- Author
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Pfitzenmaier, Lukas, Kollias, Pavlos, Risse, Nils, Schirmacher, Imke, Treserras, Bernat Puigdomenech, and Lamer, Katia
- Subjects
NUMERICAL weather forecasting ,RADAR ,GEOMETRIC surfaces ,SURFACE geometry - Abstract
The Earth Cloud, Aerosol and Radiation Explorer (EarthCARE) satellite developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched in May 2024 carries a novel 94-GHz Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR) with Doppler capability. This work describes the open-source instrument simulator Orbital-Radar, which transforms high-resolution radar data from field observations or forward simulations of numerical models to CPR primary measurements and uncertainties. The transformation accounts for sampling geometry and surface effects. We demonstrate Orbital-Radar's ability to provide realistic CPR views of typical cloud and precipitation scenes. These results provide valuable insights into the capabilities and challenges of the EarthCARE CPR mission and its advantages over the CloudSat CPR. Finally, Orbital-Radar allows for the evaluation of kilometer-scale numerical weather prediction models with EarthCARE CPR observations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2024
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