'Radar Site Rain Map', is an instantaneous surface rain rate map in Cartesian coordinates with a 2 km horizontal resolution. At single radar sites, the map covers an area of 300km x 300km. For the multiple radar site in Texas, the map covers a region of 724 km x 568 km, and in Florida 512 km x 704 km.
A key component of the TRMM project is the Ground Validation (GV) effort which consists of collecting data from ground-based radar, rain gauges and disdrometers. The data is quality-controlled, and then validation products are produced for comparison with TRMM satellite products.
The four primary GV sites are:
- Darwin, Australia;
- Houston, Texas;
- Kwajalein, Republic of the Marshall Islands;
- Melbourne, Florida.
A significant effort is also being supported at NASA Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) and vicinity to provide high quality, long-term measurements of rain rates (via a network of rain gauges collocated with National Weather Service gauges), as well as drop size distributions (DSD) using a variety of instruments, including impact-type Joss Waldvogel, laser-optical Parsivel, as well as two-dimensional video disdrometers. DSD measurements are also being collected at Melbourne and Kwajalein using Joss-Waldvogel disdrometers.