Radar Attenuation

In heavy flood producing rainfall, attenuation of the radar beam becomes a major problem, resulting in serious underestimations of rainfall accumulations. I have investigated potential corrections to account for attenuation to allow significant improvement on traditional correction methods; this included the use of dual-polarisation and observed changes in the background noise. This technique has the potential to differentiate radome attenuation from storms for correction algorithms.

Emission for outreach

Radar Bright-Band Correction

A further source of error in radar derived rainfall products is caused by melting snowflakes, creating the 'bright band'; I have investigated this showing the potential for improved correction for this effect using dual polarisation radar.