ИСТИНА

Observations and mapping of the upwelling thermal radiation of the Earth is the very promising remote sensing technique for the global monitoring of the weather and precipitations. For reliable interpretation of the observation data, numerical model of the microwave radiative transfer in the precipitating atmosphere is necessary. In the present work, numerical simulations of thermal microwave radiation in the rain have been performed at three wavelengths (3, 8 and 22 mm). Radiative properties of the rain have been simulated using public accessible T-matrix codes (Mishchenko, Moroz) for non-spherical particles of xed orientation and realistic raindrop size distributions (Marshall-Palmer) within the range of rain intensity 1-100 mm/h. Thermal radiation of innite at slab medium and isolated rain cell of kilometer size has been simulated with nite dierence scheme for the vectorial radiative transfer equation (VRTE) in dichroic scattering medium. Principal role of cell structure of the rain eld in the formation of angular and spatial distribution of the intensity and polarization of the upwelling thermal radiation has been established. Possible approaches to interpretation of satellite data are also discussed. It is necessary that spatial resolution of microwave radiometers be less than rain cell size. At the present time the resolution is approximately 15 km. It can be considerably improved, for example by two- dimensional synthetic aperture millimeter-wave radiometric interferometer for measuring full- component Stokes vector of emission from hydrometeors. The estimates show that in millimeter band it is possible to develop such equipment with spatial resolution of the order of 1-2 km, which is signicantly less than the size of rain cell, with sensitivity 0.3-0.5 K. Under this condition the second Stokes parameter may by successfully measured and may be used for investigation of precipitation regions. Y-shaped phased array antenna is the most promising to use. At the present time the idea of radiometric interferometer K-band installation on International Space Station (ISS) is under consideration. Conditions of ISS make it possible to install antenna with aperture of the size of 3 m. abstract no. A1.1-0128.14 poster presentation STW-L-020