A global model for rain attenuation prediction

Abstract

A model was developed for the prediction of rain attenuation statistics for 8 rain rate climate regions spanning all land regions from the equator to the poles. The model uses empirically determined rain rate distributions for each climate region and an empirical model to estimate path averaged rain rate for given values of point rain rate. Attenuation distribution observations were compared with model predictions. Good agreement was obtained for earth-space paths at 0.1 percent of the year. At the extremes, 0.01 and 1 percent of the year the observations were generally within the model estimate bounds but the agreement is not as good as at 0.1 percent of the year. The discrepancies are attributed to the limited duration of the attenuation observations and to the limited number of rain rate distribution observations.