Comparison of radar reflectivity calculations to satellite measurements across the melting layer of precipitation

Calculations of the radar reflectivity factor across the melting layer of precipitation successfully reproduce measured data provided by the Precipitation Radar (PR) of the Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM) satellite. This work proves that calculations made by use of a proposed modeling scheme, which is based on the eccentric spheres model for melting ice particles, deviate from measurements by no more than 8%. As a side effect of the comparisons made, cases of erroneous information about the height and width of the melting layer in TRMM data sets are brought to the light.