Diurnal Variability of Tropical Rainfall Retrieved from Combined GOES and TRMM Satellite Information

Abstract

Recent progress in satellite remote-sensing techniques for precipitation estimation, along with more accurate tropical rainfall measurements from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Microwave Imager (TMI) and precipitation radar (PR) instruments, have made it possible to monitor tropical rainfall diurnal patterns and their intensities from satellite information. One year (August 1998-July 1999) of tropical rainfall estimates from the Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information using Artificial Neural Networks (PERSIANN) system were used to produce monthly means of rainfall diurnal cycles at hourly and 1 1 scales over a domain (30S-30N, 80E-10W) from the Americas across the Pacific Ocean to Australia and eastern Asia.