Investigations into high resolution mapping of precipitation features utilizing the TRMM precipitation Radar

Precipitation measurements from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite's Precipitation Radar (PR) have been used to create high-resolution grids of precipitation features at a resolution of 0.05degrees. This grid size is on the order of a nominal PR instantaneous field of view (ifov) of 4.9km at nadir. Currently 12 years of data has been collected from the TRMM mission, resulting in sufficient sampling to begin these high-resolution studies. Precipitation fields at this resolution show detailed, local climatological features and comparisons with topographic data sets allow for the identification of potential problem areas in the retrieval algorithms.