Reduced liquid water content for cloud attenuation prediction: the impact of temperature

The prediction of cloud attenuation relying on the concept of reducing liquid water content to a fixed temperature (wR) is investigated. Based on an extensive dataset of radiosonde observations collected in Europe, the focus is on the quantification of the prediction error due to the approximation introduced with wR. The obtained cloud attenuation results indicate that the approximation error D is markedly sensitive to the reduction temperature TR and that, specifically, TR = - 5°C turns out to minimise D in European sites, whatever the frequency of interest in the 20–100 GHz range.