Announcing the Final Examination of Mr. Khalil A. Ahmad for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Electrical Engineering

Date: October 26, 2007
Time: 11:30 a.m.
Room: ENG III 356
ESTIMATION OF OCEANIC RAINFALL USING PASSIVE AND ACTIVE MEASUREMENTS FROM SEAWINDS SPACEBORNE MICROWAVE SENSOR

NASA’s satellite microwave remote sensor, SeaWinds, is used to infer oceanic wind vectors (speed and direction) by collecting multiple azimuth active (radar backscatter) and passive (radiometric brightness temperature) measurements.

This dissertation expands the utility of the SeaWinds instrument by exploiting the rain sensitivity of these passive / active measurements to provide quantitative estimates of the global oceanic rainfall. A statistical mathematical inversion algorithm is developed, and trained using a large database of near simultaneously collocated SeaWinds measurements with rain rates produced by NASA’s Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) microwave imager (TMI).

The quality, of the retrieved SeaWinds rain measurements, is evaluated through simulations and comparisons with standard rain products obtained from independent microwave observations. Results demonstrate the excellent rain detection and estimation capabilities of the SeaWinds rain retrieval algorithm.

 The algorithm has been implemented by NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) as part of level 2B (L2B) science data product.

Outline of Studies:
Major: Electrical Engineering

Educational Career:
M.S.E.E., 2004, University of Central Florida

Committee in Charge:
Dr. W. Linwood Jones
Dr. Takis Kasparis
Dr. Larry Andrews
Dr. Parveen Wahid
Mr. James Johnson

Approved for distribution by W. Linwood Jones, Committee Chair, on October 19, 2007.

The public is welcome to attend.