Spaceborne microwave radiometers represent an important component of the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission due to their frequent sampling of rain systems. Microwave radiometers measure microwave radiation (brightness temperatures Tb), which can be converted into precipitation estimates with appropriate assumptions. However, detecting shallow precipitation systems using spaceborne radiometers is challenging, especially over land, as their weak signals are hard to differentiate from those associated with dry conditions. This study uses a random forest (RF) model to classify microwave radiometer observations as dry, shallow, or nonshallow over the Netherlands}a regionwith varying surface conditions and frequent occurrence of shallow precipitation. The RF model is trained on five years of data (2016–20) and tested with two independent years (2015 and 2021). The observations are classified using ground-based weather radar echo top heights. Various RF models are assessed, such as using only GPM Microwave Imager (GMI) Tb values as input features or including spatially aligned ERA5 2-m temperature and freezing level reanalysis and/or Dual-Frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR) observations. Independent of the input features, the model performs best in summer and worst in winter. The model classifies observations from high-frequency channels ($85 GHz) with lower Tb values as nonshallow, higher values as dry, and those in between as shallow. Misclassified footprints exhibit radiometric characteristics corresponding to their assigned class. Case studies reveal dry observations misclassified as shallow are associated with lower Tb values, likely resulting from the presence of ice particles in nonprecipitating clouds. Shallow footprints misclassified as dry are likely related to the absence of ice particles. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT: Published research concerning rainfall retrieval algorithms from microwave radiometers is often focused on the accuracy of these algorithms. While shallow precipitation over land is often characterized as problematic in these studies, little progress has been made with these systems. In particular, precipitation formed by shallow clouds, where shallow refers to the clouds being close to Earth’s surface, is often missed. This study is focused on detecting shallow precipitation and its physical characteristics to further improve its detection from spaceborne sensors. As such, it contributes to understanding which shallow precipitation scenes are challenging to detect from microwave radiometers, suggesting possible ways for algorithm improvement.

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The Goddard Profiling algorithm (GPROF) converts radiometer observations from Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) constellation satellites into precipitation estimates. Typically, high-quality ground-based estimates serve as reference to evaluate GPROF's performance. To provide a fair comparison, the ground-based estimates are often spatially aligned to GPROF. However, GPROF combines observations from various sensors and channels, each associated with a distinct footprint. Consequently, uncertainties related to the representativeness of the sampled areas are introduced in addition to the uncertainty when converting brightness temperatures into precipitation intensities. The exact contribution of resampling precipitation estimates, required to spatially and temporally align different resolutions when combining or comparing precipitation observations, to the overall uncertainty remains unknown. Here, we analyze the current performance of GPROF over the Netherlands during a 4-year period (2017-2020) while investigating the uncertainty related to sampling. The latter is done by simulating the reference precipitation as satellite footprints that vary in size, geometry, and applied weighting technique. Only GPROF estimates based on observations from the conical-scanning radiometers of the GPM constellation are used. The reference estimates are gauge-adjusted radar precipitation estimates from two ground-based weather radars from the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI). Echo top heights (ETHs) retrieved from the same radars are used to classify the precipitation as shallow, medium, or deep. Spatial averaging methods (Gaussian weighting vs. arithmetic mean) minimally affect the magnitude of the precipitation estimates. Footprint size has a higher impact but cannot explain all discrepancies between the ground- and satellite-based estimates. Additionally, the discrepancies between GPROF and the reference are largest for low ETHs, while the relative bias between the different footprint sizes and implemented weighting methods increase with increasing ETHs. Lastly, our results do not show a clear difference between coastal and land simulations. We conclude that the uncertainty introduced by merging different channels and sensors cannot fully explain the discrepancies between satellite- and ground-based precipitation estimates. Hence, uncertainties related to the retrieval algorithm and environmental conditions are found to be more prominent than resampling uncertainties, in particular for shallow and light precipitation.

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Accurate precipitation observations are crucial for hydrological forecasts, notably over rapidly responding urban areas. This study evaluated the accuracy of three gridded spaceborne rainfall products (Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM (IMERG), Meteosat Second Generation Visible (MSG-VIS), and MSG-Infrared (MSG-IR)) and the non-governmental Trans-African Hydro-Meteorological Observatory (TAHMO) gauges across the Odaw catchment (Accra, Ghana) from January 2020-July 2022. IMERG is hardly able to capture the strong spatial variability of rainfall required for flood forecasting, but agrees in annual sums with TAHMO and MSG-IR. MSG-IR has difficulties during the wet season. MSG-VIS, only available during daylight, shows limited accuracy and gives high estimates while other products do not detect rain. TAHMO gauges effectively record high-intensity events and their strong spatial variability, although some (daily) accumulations are doubtful and data gaps exist due to technical issues. These findings assist hydrological modelers in selecting appropriate datasets at suitable spatiotemporal resolutions for their research.

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Catchment-scale plastic pollution assessments provide insights in its sources, sinks, and pathways. We present an approach to quantify macroplastic transport and density across the Odaw catchment, Ghana. We divided the catchment into the non-urban riverine, urban riverine, and urban tidal zones. Macroplastic transport and density on riverbanks and land were monitored at ten locations in December 2021. The urban riverine zone had the highest transport, and the urban tidal zone had the highest riverbank and land macroplastic density. Water sachets, soft fragments, and foam fragments were the most abundant items. Our approach aims to be transferable to other catchments globally.

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Observations retrieved from radiometers aboard several satellites are combined in the Global Precipitation Measurement mission (GPM) to provide a global precipitation dataset. Radiometers are able to sense the radiance naturally emitted by the Earth's surface or emitted/scattered by hydrometeors. These observations, also known as brightness temperatures, are converted into precipitation estimates by the GPM Profiling Algorithm (GPROF). Although this algorithm is already in use for several decades and the conversion of brightness temperatures to precipitation estimates in general has been studied extensively, persistent challenges remain. Two of these challenges are: 1. the retrieval of precipitation formed close to the Earth’s surface, also referred to as shallow precipitation, and 2. low-intensity precipitation. Increased understanding of the physics behind these precipitation types will help to improve the accuracy of the conversion of brightness temperatures to precipitation. This study couples observations from radiometers to both ground-based precipitation observations and reflectivity profiles from ground-based weather radars over the Netherlands. The Netherlands is an ideal study area for this purpose as both precipitation types (shallow and low-intensity) occur regularly over the Netherlands (~52°N) and high-quality (gauge-adjusted) radar data is available. We use brightness temperatures from conical scanning radiometers belonging to the GPM in this study. Firstly, we investigate the relationship between brightness temperatures from different channels (frequency-dependent) and precipitation intensities. Within this analysis we try to take the effect of different footprint sizes of the different channels (related to the differences in the employed radio frequencies) into account, in order to limit the dependence of the retrieved relations on the footprint size. Secondly, we couple the observations of the radiometers with ground-based radar reflectivity profiles to gain insight in the vertical structure of the precipitation types and how these affect brightness temperatures.@en

Applications like drought monitoring and forecasting can profit from the global and near-real-time availability of satellite-based precipitation estimates once their related uncertainties and challenges are identified and treated. To this end, this study evaluates the IMERG V06B Late Run precipitation product from the Global Precipitation Measurement mission (GPM), a multisatellite product that combines space-based radar, passive microwave (PMW), and infrared (IR) data into gridded precipitation estimates. The evaluation is performed on the spatiotemporal resolution of IMERG (0.1° × 0.1°, 30 min) over the Netherlands over a 5-yr period. A gauge-adjusted radar precipitation product from the Royal NetherlandsMeteorological Institute (KNMI) is used as reference, against which IMERG shows a large positive bias. To find the origin of this systematic overestimation, the data are divided into seasons, rainfall intensity ranges, echo top height (ETH) ranges, and categories based on the relative contributions of IR, morphing, and PMW data to the IMERG estimates. Furthermore, the specific radiometer is identified for each PMW-based estimate. IMERG’s detection performance improves with higher ETH and rainfall intensity, but the associated error and relative bias increase as well. Severe overestimation occurs during low-intensity rainfall events and is especially linked to PMW observations. All individual PMW instruments show the same pattern: overestimation of low-intensity events and underestimation of high-intensity events. IMERG misses a large fraction of shallow rainfall events, which is amplified when IR data are included. Space-based retrieval of shallow and low-intensity precipitation events should improve before IMERG can become accurate over the middle and high latitudes.@en