Bright-band characterization in a tropical station from ground-based radar data

It is crucial to adequately quantify microwave signal degradations due to the melting layer along the Earth-space links. The presence and physical boundaries of the melting layer is defined by the bright-band; hence, the need to properly characterize the bright-band. Meteorological data spanning thirteen months scanned by ground-based S-band 3D RAPIC radar at 500 m resolution was sourced from the Malaysian Meteorological Department. Data used for UTM was retrieved from Kluang radar station images after filtering, sorting, arranging, extraction and decoding of the data with MATLAB programming codes, from which the vertical reflectivity profile were constructed. Results from this work suggested that the bright-band parameters are influenced by seasonal, annual and latitudinal variations. The 00 C isotherm and rain heights were estimated to be 6.60 km and 1.67 km respectively, while the bright-band thickness was 3.03 km. Comparison with results from similar tropics show these parameters largely depend on latitude, and it also depends on the period of the year the measurement was taken. Finally, when compared with the experimental results, it was found that the ITU-Rec. P. 839-3 models poorly predicts the melting layer attenuation in the Malaysian tropical stations. © 2014 CAFET-INNOVA TECHNICAL SOCIETY. All rights reserved.