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Tropical rain systems constitute a life-giving resource for billions of people, but their large variability represents a serious threat to those same people in the form of drought or flood extremes. The tropical rainfall process provides an important coupling between the ocean and the atmosphere and a key link in the quasi-periodic phenomenon known as the El Niņo/Southern Oscillation. Of course, convective tropical rain systems provide an important mechanism for fluxes from the troposphere to the stratosphere. Inherent in these precipitation-producing processes is a mechanism for charge separation between the earth and the ionosphere and, finally, precipitation provides an important scavenging mechanism for removing gaseous and aerosol chemicals from the lower atmosphere.
Significant progress in the area of tropical rainfall measurements has been spurred by the development of new measuring techniques that make it feasible to observe precipitation from space. This, of course, presents the potential for measuring rainfall not only over well-instrumented continental areas, but over the vast oceanic regions as well. Contents - Requirements for Measuring Tropical Rainfall, Its Nature and Its Role in The General Circulation
- Spaceborne and Airborne Techniques for Remote Sensing or Rainfall
- Retrieval Algorithms and Data Processing and Analysis
- Sampling Strategies
- Mission Requirements and Data Management
- Ground-Based Measurements
- Author Index
- Subject Index
ISBN 0-937194-14-X, 1988, Hardcover, 528 pages
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