Statistical Study of Rainfall Inversion Using the Earth-Space Link at the Ku Band: Optimization and Validation for 1 Year of Data

The large-scale monitoring of rainfall is of great significance in the research of meteorology, hydrology, and atmospheric measurement science. In recent years, with the quick development of communication satellite constellation, the use of earth-space link (ESL) to measure rainfall in the atmosphere is expected to be a potential approach for the large-scale monitoring of global rainfall. In this article, to verify the long-term performance of rainfall measurement using ESL, the data of an ESL at the Ku band and a Thies Laser Precipitation Monitor (LPM) in Nanjing were collected. The rainfall inversion model using ESL was optimized according to the height of 0 °C-layer from the radiosonde data of ten years, and the inversion results in the different types of rainfall were discussed. The results show that the rainfall inversed by the optimized ESL model are in good agreement with the rainfall measured by LPM (correlative coefficient is 0.985), the relative errors of rain intensity inversed by ESL in light rain, moderate rain, heavy rain, and extreme rain are 20%, 15.17%, 8.93%, and 8.99%, respectively. The average relative errors of rain intensity measured by the ESL in convective rainfall and stratiform rainfall are 16.01% and 26.59%, respectively.