Intercomparison of single-frequency methods for retrieving a vertical rain profile from airborne or spaceborne radar data

This paper briefly reviews several single-frequency rain profiling methods for an airborne or spaceborne radar. The authors describe the different methods from a unified point of view starting from the basic differential equation. This facilitates the comparisons between the methods and also provides a better understanding of the physical and mathematical basis of the methods. The application of several methods to airborne radar data taken during the Convective and Precipitation/Electrification Experiment is shown. Finally, the authors consider a hybrid method that provides a smooth transition between the Hitschfeld-Bordan method, which performs well at low attenuations, and the surface reference method, for which the relative error decreases with increasing path attenuation.