RAINFALL ESTIMATION USING SATELLITE DATA FOR PARAÍBA DO SUL BASIN (BRAZIL)

This work presents a self-consistent algorithm for near real-time rainfall estimation via infrared Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) (each hour) data based on a validation simultaneous dataset from Precipitation Radar (PR) onboard the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite, GOES and lightning data, for the basin of Paraíba do Sul river. The dataset corresponds the period from September of 1998 to March of 2000. The rainfall estimation methodology was developed by Morales and Anagnostou (2003) and has been adapted for the proposed of this work and it is based on following assumptions: (1) lightning is correlated with the presence of precipitation and ice particles that are associated with deep convective nucleus; (2) the precipitation area and its convective portion are related to the cloud and lightning areas of a precipitating system; and (3) lightning and no-lightning clouds exhibit different precipitation characteristics. The aforementioned database was used to analyse and understand the main physical characteristics of the different types of raining systems which act in the study area. Results are presented and discussed. 1