Intercomparison of satellite and ground-based precipitation in the area of Cyprus

Cyprus has an excellent location for studying meteorology, climatology of atmospheric aerosols and aerosol-cloud-precipitation interaction. Aerosol-cloud-precipitation dynamics in the region of Cyprus are responsible for the country’s precipitation budget. This study uses observations from the NASA’s Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Mission and from the two ground-based radars of the Department of Meteorology (DoM) to measure the distribution of precipitation over Cyprus. The DPR (Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar) aboard of GPM is used in order to derive precipitation rate at the ground with a spatial resolution of 5-25km for 120km wide swath. The ground-based radar stations provide raw information with a spatial resolution of 0.1° and a radius of 150km. The two datasets are interpolated on a universal grid in order to enable the calibration of the raw data and their validation with the GPM data. The results will contribute to the development of an automated method for the estimation of the precipitation budget over the area of Cyprus and thus, drought monitoring in the region of the eastern Mediterranean. The presented work is under the EXCELSIOR project that received funding from the European Union [H2020-WIDESPREAD-04-2017: Teaming Phase2] project under grant agreement no. 857510, and from the Republic of Cyprus.