Absolute calibration of C-band weather radars using differential propagation phase in rain

Described is a method for calibrating C-band weather radars which have both polarisation and Doppler capabilities. Attenuation corrections for both co-polar and differential reflectivities are performed gate-to-gate progressively and the differential propagation phase is estimated from the corrected reflectivity profiles. Comparison with the measured differential propagation phase shows high sensitivity to the absolute calibration of the co-polar reflectivity. The method is implementable in almost real time for operational systems and is also capable of correcting for rain on radome effects at C-band.