Some areas of study in SG 3 regarding precipitation effects:
Recently developed maps of basic data – e.g. rain, columnar water content, give far greater accuracy than the previous rain zone maps. On-going desire to improve the mapping of basic radiometeorological parameters, both for clear and non-clear air.
Modelling of rain structure still needs some improvement; have in mind differences between rain types – stratiform (mid-lats), convective (tropical). Already mentioned the concept of “effective path length” through rain in the prediction methods. In the case of a slant path to a satellite, have to chose an appropriate height for the rain to use in the model and also to take into account the non-uniformity of rain in the cell, vertically and horizontally. Reduction factors used to allow for this.
