Calibration and validation of the Polarimetric Radio Occultation and Heavy Precipitation experiment aboard the PAZ satellite

This paper presents the calibration and validation studies for the Radio Occultation and Heavy Precipitation experiment aboard the PAZ satellite. These studies, necessary to assess and characterize the noise level and robustness of the differential phase shift (ΔΦ) observable of polarimetric radio o...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Atmospheric measurement techniques 2020-03, Vol.13 (3), p.1299-1313
Main Authors: Padullés, Ramon, Ao, Chi O, Turk, F. Joseph, de la Torre Juárez, Manuel, Iijima, Byron, Wang, Kuo Nung, Cardellach, Estel
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Antennas
Antennas (Electronics)
Atmosphere
Atmospheric precipitations
Atmospheric water
Calibration
Electromagnetism
Experiments
Faraday effect
Global positioning systems
GPS
Heavy metals
Heavy precipitation
Hydrometeors
Impurities
Ionosphere
Isolation
Noise levels
Polarimetry
Precipitation
Proxy
Radio
Radio occultation
Rainfall
Receivers & amplifiers
Satellites
Upper atmosphere
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This paper presents the calibration and validation studies for the Radio Occultation and Heavy Precipitation experiment aboard the PAZ satellite. These studies, necessary to assess and characterize the noise level and robustness of the differential phase shift (ΔΦ) observable of polarimetric radio occultations (PROs), confirm the good performance of the experiment and the capability of this technique in sensing precipitation. It is shown how all the predicted effects that could have an impact into the PRO observables (e.g., effect of metallic structures nearby the antenna, the Faraday rotation at the ionosphere, signal impurities in the transmission, and altered cross-polarization isolation) are effectively calibrated and corrected, and they have a negligible effect on the final observable. The on-orbit calibration, performed using an extensive dataset of free-of-rain and low-ionospheric activity observations, is successfully used to correct all the collected observations, which are further validated against independent precipitation observations confirming the sensitivity of the observables to the presence of hydrometeors. The validation results also show how vertically averaged ΔΦ can be used as a proxy for precipitation.
ISSN:1867-8548
1867-1381
1867-8548
DOI:10.5194/amt-13-1299-2020