RECONSTRUCTION OF THE SPATIAL-DISTRIBUTION OF RADAR REFLECTIVITY OF PRECIPITATION THROUGH LINEAR-INVERSION TECHNIQUES

The authors present a method aiming to remove the smoothing effect due to the antenna beamwidth in the reconstruction of the rain reflectivi ty based on radar measurements. The function to be reconstructed is th e spatial distribution Z(x, y, h) of the radar reflectivity Z of the p recipitation, which is shown to be related by a Fredholm integral equa tion to the power received by the radar. This integral equation is tra nsformed into a set of linear equations and subsequently solved throug h a constrained-linear-inversion technique. The method is then applied to the cases of both stratiform and convective rain, leading to an im proved estimation of the reflectivity-peak location and intensity, and of the overall reflectivity profile.