TRMM Ground Validation Rain Existence L2 1 month V7 (TRMM_2A52) at GES DISC

The TRMM_2A52 product displays the existence of rain in the radar volume scan. 'Existence' is the fraction of the radar FOV which has measurable precipitation. The GV radar FOV is defined as a base scan (i.e., the lowest level sweep). Each product file has the Existence data of one site (not one radar) for one month.

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.