The detection and quantitative estimation of precipitation are great scientific challenges with important impact on the environment and society. Precipitation has a key-role in the water cycle and hence in the energy budget of the earth-atmosphere system. Moreover, the considerable increase of extreme events in recent decades, in particular of floods and storms, has accentuated the significance of rainfall remote sensing as a means of monitoring environmental hazard. The group is active in rainfall remote sensing research aiming to improve the knowledge of precipitation physics as well as the accuracy of quantitative precipitation estimation. Our current research involves the use of radiometric sounding and radar measurements for the development of a precipitation algorithm which blends the physical observations with some prior knowledge of the nature of precipitating events.