Iterative 2D hydrometeor profile retrievals using radar and wideband radiometer observations

By combining active radar and passive radiometers, the opportunities to accurately estimate hydrometeor and cloud characteristics improve. The authors present a retrieval algorithm that determines an appropriate, though not necessarily unique, estimate of the hydrometeor profiles associated with anvil, convective-and quasistratiform clouds whose forward calculations match the observations within specified error thresholds. These thresholds might be reduced with algorithm improvements. The high frequencies help define the frozen particle size distributions