Untitled Document

Global climate studies aim to reproduce current distributions of precipitation and forecast how these might change in the future. Over most of the Earth's surface, only remotely sensed data is available. Remote sensing of precipitation, unfortunately, requires the simultaneous retrieval of more physical variables than can presently be observed from either space- or ground-based sensors. Learning more about precipitation systems on a global basis therefore requires the intelligent blending of observations with some prior knowledge of the nature of precipitation. Current research involves the use of multiple sensors as well as cloud-resolving numerical models to derive descriptions of rainfall that are physically and dynamically consistent.