Determination of the sea surface NRCS when corrugated by blowing wind and rainfall: An application to rainfall rate measurements over sea
Abstract
The prediction of the power backscattered by the sea surface in the presence of rainfall is the object of this paper. An electromagnetic (e.m.) model predicting Normalized Radar Cross Section (NRCS) of such surface, must conveniently account for both a large scale roughness roughness due to wind and a small scale roughness due to raindrop splashes. While several models are available in the literature for wind-induced roughness, only few experimental results or theoretical studies concerning additional rainfall-induced roughness are available. Here we describe an e.m. model that accounts for the effects of the raindrop splashes, and discuss some related results. An improved algorithm is then proposed here for retrieving rainfall rate profiles by means of spaceborne rain radars, which utilizes the relationship between sea NRCS and rainfall rate.
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