Satellite Clouds and Precipitation Observations for Meteorology and Climate

Measuring precipitation from space is a long standing issue of meteorology and climatology. Since the launch of the first meteorological satellites in the 60s several visible/infrared/microwave techniques for "inferring", rather than "measuring" rainfall intensity from space were conceived, but seldom reached operational application. Algorithms have greatly evolved and now offer an acceptable quality level when products are averaged over suitable time and space scales. Daily, monthly and yearly products have become important inputs for climate studies, but their quality significantly lowers when the algorithms are applied to estimate instantaneous rainrates. The most recent methods go back to the basic physical principles of precipitation formation and evolution. The re-examination of the physical content of the algorithms is driven by new insights on precipitation formation mechanisms now available together with new observational tools from space and from the ground. New satellite missions, activities and efforts of international organizations are devoted to the generation of high resolution precipitation products for applications in meteorology, hydrology and climate.