The present study comes under the project “MAGNET-IGP: Strengthening the research line in physics and microphysics of the atmosphere (Agreement No 010-2017-FONDECYT)”. Yamina Silva-Vidal, Jose Luis Flores-Rojas and Jairo Valdivia-Prado would like to acknowledge the Peruvian PPR068 programme "Reducción de vulnerabilidad y atención de emergencias por desastres" for financial support of their work. This work was done using computational resources, HPC-Linux -Cluster, from Laboratorio de Dinámica de Fluidos Geofísicos Computacionales at Instituto Geofísico del Perú (Grants 101-2014-FONDECYT, SPIRALES2012, IRD-IGP, Manglares IGP-IDRC, PP068 program).

Information on the vertical structure of rain, especially near the surface is important for accurate quantitative precipitation estimation from weather and space-borne radars. In the present study, the rainfall characteristics, from a vertically pointed profile Radar in the Mantaro basin (Huancayo, Peru) are observed. In summary, diurnal variation of near-surface rainfall and bright band height, average vertical profiles of the drop size distribution (DSD), rain rate, radar reflectivity (Ze) and liquid water content (LWC) are investigated to derive the rainfall characteristics. Diurnal variation of rain rate and bright band height show the bimodal distribution, where frequent and higher rain rate occurred during the afternoon and nighttime, and more than 70% bright band height found between 4.3-4.7 km. The average vertical profiles of Ze show the opposite characteristics above and below ...