TRMM Ground Validation Radar Site Rain Type Totals Map L3 1 month 2 km V7 (TRMM_3A54) at GES DISC

The 3A54 product, 'Site Rainfall Map', is a map of monthly surface rain totals derived from the instantaneous rain rate maps (2A53). The map is in Cartesian coordinates with a 2 km horizontal resolution and covers an area of 300km x 300km at single radar sites while the covered area varies for multiple radar sites - 724 km x 568 km at Texas site and 512 km x 704 km at Florida site. This monthly rainfall map is not a simple accumulation of the instantaneous maps as gaps in the data must be factored into the calculation.

A key component of the TRMM project is the Ground Validation (GV) effort which consists of collecting data from ground-based radar, rain gauges and disdrometers. The data is quality-controlled, and then validation products are produced for comparison with TRMM satellite products.

The four primary GV sites are:

• Darwin, Australia;
• Houston, Texas;
• Kwajalein, Republic of the Marshall Islands;
• Melbourne, Florida.

A significant effort is also being supported at NASA Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) and vicinity to provide high quality, long-term measurements of rain rates (via a network of rain gauges collocated with National Weather Service gauges), as well as drop size distributions (DSD) using a variety of instruments, including impact-type Joss Waldvogel, laser-optical Parsivel, as well as two-dimensional video disdrometers. DSD measurements are also being collected at Melbourne and Kwajalein using Joss-Waldvogel disdrometers.