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Backscattered Energy As pulse volumes within the radar beam encounter targets, energy will be scattered in all directions. A very small portion of the intercepted energy will be backscattered toward the radar. The degree or amount of backscatter is determined by target
We are concerned with two types of scattering, Rayleigh and non-Rayleigh. Rayleigh scattering occurs with targets whose diameter (D) is much smaller (D < Nearly all hailstones are non-Rayleigh scatterers due to their larger diameters. However, since the vast majority of targets sampled by the WSR-88D are raindrop size or smaller, the Rayleigh assumption is used in all computations of radar reflectivity.
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