Synthesis of Drop Counter Rain Rate from a Tipping Bucket Rain Gauge

Earth-Satellite propagation models for Ka-band and above require measured rain rate statistics, preferably locally, with an integration time of 1 minute. In this paper we explore the possibility of deriving 1 minute-integrated precipitation rate time series using a rain gauge tipping bucket and evaluate the performance with a co-sited drop counter rain gauge. The method consists of distributing, using several algorithms, a fixed number of drops corresponding to a tip of the tipping bucket in the interval between two tips. The performance of the retrieval is compared with the results obtained with a co-located drop counter on a per-day time series basis, time correlation and in terms of the CCDFs, using more than two hundred days with rain events. The results are promising, offering reasonable confidence in using a tipping bucket device as a backup.