PAMTRA (Passive and Active Microwave TRAnsfer model )
Simulated device: Radars and radiometers in the microwave region (1-800 GHz)
Contact: (within HD(CP)²) Emiliano Orlandi (eorlandi@meteo.uni-koeln.de)
Output parameter
Polarized brightness temperature [K], radar reflectivity [dBZ], Doppler velocity [m/s], Atmospheric attenuation [dBZ], radar spectral width [m/s], normalized radar 3rd and 4th moment [#]
Technical specification
| Column or 3D? | column based |
| Operation on model time step? | yes |
| Required libraries | NetCDF, Liblapack, DFFTpack |
| Programming language | Fortran, optional Python wrapper |
| If online, is it modular? | offline |
| Ground-based or space-borne? | Ground and satellite based |
Usage
Minimum set of physical quantities:
- 1D - Profiles of: temperature, pressure, altitude, water vapor mixing ratio, hydrometeor mass mixing ratio and/or number concentration and/or effective radius
- 0D - Ground temperature, latitude and longitude, date and time
- External: hydrometeor mass-size relation, area-size relation and ice scattering model (Mie or Tmatrix) can be specified by the user
- Drop-size distribution can be modeled as monodisperse, exponential, log-normal, gamma distributions depending on the assumption of the meteorological model. Or input directly to the RTM model (for bin-microphysical models).
Need for a special grid?
- column based, no grid
Are parameters given via namelist or have to be coded?
- All the parameters are given via namelist. No need to recompile the code when options are changed.
Are there special requirements to the input quantities?
- should be instantaneous
Documentation: User guide is under development.
Models for application: offline with COSMO, MESO-NH and WRF output
Suitable for MESSy?: to be tested
Format of input data: NetCDF, ASCII
Format of output data: NetCDF
Computational costs: Strongly varying, depending on assumption, number of defined hydrometeors, number of bin for drop-size-distribution discretization and number of atmospheric layers. Estimates for one column and one frequency run on one CPU:
- clear sky: < 1s
- cloudy: Mie scattering: < 1 min; Tmatrix scattering: < 5 min