scholarly journals Evaluation of the Radar QPE and Rain Gauge Data Merging Methods in Northern China

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qingtai Qiu ◽  
Jia Liu ◽  
Jiyang Tian ◽  
Yufei Jiao ◽  
Chuanzhe Li ◽  
...  

Radar-rain gauge merging methods have been widely used to produce high-quality precipitation with fine spatial resolution by combing the advantages of the rain gauge observation and the radar quantitative precipitation estimation (QPE). Different merging methods imply a specific choice on the treatment of radar and rain gauge data. In order to improve their applicability, significant studies have focused on evaluating the performances of the merging methods. In this study, a categorization of the radar-rain gauge merging methods was proposed as: (1) Radar bias adjustment category, (2) radar-rain gauge integration category, and (3) rain gauge interpolation category for a total of six commonly used merging methods, i.e., mean field bias (MFB), regression inverse distance weighting (RIDW), collocated co-kriging (CCok), fast Bayesian regression kriging (FBRK), regression kriging (RK), and kriging with external drift (KED). Eight different storm events were chosen from semi-humid and semi-arid areas of Northern China to test the performance of the six methods. Based on the leave-one-out cross validation (LOOCV), conclusions were obtained that the integration category always performs the best, the bias adjustment category performs the worst, and the interpolation category ranks between them. The quality of the merging products can be a function of the merging method that is affected by both the quality of radar QPE and the ability of the rain gauge to capture small-scale rainfall features. In order to further evaluate the applicability of the merging products, they were then used as the input to a rainfall-runoff model, the Hybrid-Hebei model, for flood forecasting. It is revealed that a higher quality of the merging products indicates a better agreement between the observed and the simulated runoff.

2014 ◽  
Vol 138 ◽  
pp. 125-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Auguste Gires ◽  
Ioulia Tchiguirinskaia ◽  
Daniel Schertzer ◽  
Alma Schellart ◽  
Alexis Berne ◽  
...  

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (7) ◽  
pp. 2493-2502 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Kneis ◽  
C. Chatterjee ◽  
R. Singh

Abstract. The paper examines the quality of satellite-based precipitation estimates for the lower Mahanadi River basin (eastern India). The considered data sets known as 3B42 and 3B42-RT (version 7/7A) are routinely produced by the tropical rainfall measuring mission (TRMM) from passive microwave and infrared recordings. While the 3B42-RT data are disseminated in real time, the gauge-adjusted 3B42 data set is published with a delay of some months. The quality of the two products was assessed in a two-step procedure. First, the correspondence between the remotely sensed precipitation rates and rain gauge data was evaluated at the sub-basin scale. Second, the quality of the rainfall estimates was assessed by analysing their performance in the context of rainfall–runoff simulation. At sub-basin level (4000 to 16 000 km2) the satellite-based areal precipitation estimates were found to be moderately correlated with the gauge-based counterparts (R2 of 0.64–0.74 for 3B42 and 0.59–0.72 for 3B42-RT). Significant discrepancies between TRMM data and ground observations were identified at high-intensity levels. The rainfall depth derived from rain gauge data is often not reflected by the TRMM estimates (hit rate < 0.6 for ground-based intensities > 80 mm day-1). At the same time, the remotely sensed rainfall rates frequently exceed the gauge-based equivalents (false alarm ratios of 0.2–0.6). In addition, the real-time product 3B42-RT was found to suffer from a spatially consistent negative bias. Since the regionalisation of rain gauge data is potentially associated with a number of errors, the above results are subject to uncertainty. Hence, a validation against independent information, such as stream flow, was essential. In this case study, the outcome of rainfall–runoff simulation experiments was consistent with the above-mentioned findings. The best fit between observed and simulated stream flow was obtained if rain gauge data were used as model input (Nash–Sutcliffe index of 0.76–0.88 at gauges not affected by reservoir operation). This compares to the values of 0.71–0.78 for the gauge-adjusted TRMM 3B42 data and 0.65–0.77 for the 3B42-RT real-time data. Whether the 3B42-RT data are useful in the context of operational runoff prediction in spite of the identified problems remains a question for further research.


Water ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 1533 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olkeba Leta ◽  
Aly El-Kadi ◽  
Henrietta Dulai ◽  
Kariem Ghazal

Evaluating the performance of watershed models is essential for a reliable assessment of water resources, particularly in Pacific island watersheds, where modeling efforts are challenging due to their unique features. Such watersheds are characterized by low water residence time, highly permeable volcanic rock outcrops, high topographic and rainfall spatial variability, and lack of hydrological data. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model was used for hydrological modeling of the Nuuanu area watershed (NAW) and Heeia watershed on the Island of Oahu (Hawaii). The NAW, which had well-distributed rainfall gauging stations within the watershed, was used for comparison with the Heeia watershed that lacked recoded rainfall data within the watershed. For the latter watershed, daily rain gauge data from the neighboring watersheds and spatially interpolated 250 m resolution rainfall data were used. The objectives were to critically evaluate the performance of SWAT under rain gauge data scarce conditions for small-scale watersheds that experience high rainfall spatial variability over short distances and to determine if spatially interpolated gridded rainfall data can be used as a remedy in such conditions. The model performance was evaluated by using the Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE), the percent bias (PBIAS), and the coefficient of determination (R2), including model prediction uncertainty at 95% confidence interval (95PCI). Overall, the daily observed streamflow hydrographs were well-represented by SWAT when well-distributed rain gauge data were used for NAW, yielding NSE and R2 values of > 0.5 and bracketing > 70% of observed streamflows at 95PCI. However, the model showed an overall low performance (NSE and R2 ≤ 0.5) for the Heeia watershed compared to the NAW’s results. Although the model showed low performance for Heeia, the gridded rainfall data generally outperformed the rain gauge data that were used from outside of the watershed. Thus, it was concluded that finer resolution gridded rainfall data can be used as a surrogate for watersheds that lack recorded rainfall data in small-scale Pacific island watersheds.


2013 ◽  
Vol 141 (5) ◽  
pp. 1527-1544 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe Lopez

Abstract Four-dimensional variational data assimilation (4D-Var) experiments with 6-hourly rain gauge accumulations observed at synoptic stations (SYNOP) around the globe have been run over several months, both at high resolution in an ECMWF operations-like framework and at lower resolution with the reference observational coverage reduced to surface pressure data only, as would be expected in early twentieth-century periods. The key aspects of the technical implementation of rain gauge data assimilation in 4D-Var are described, which include the specification of observation errors, bias correction procedures, screening, and quality control. Results from experiments indicate that the positive impact of rain gauges on forecast scores remains limited in the operations-like context because of their competition with all other observations already available. In contrast, when only synoptic station surface pressure observations are assimilated in the data-poor control experiment, the additional assimilation of rain gauge measurements substantially improves not only surface precipitation scores, but also analysis and forecast scores of temperature, geopotential, wind, and humidity at most atmospheric levels and for forecast ranges up to 10 days. The verification against Meteosat infrared imagery also shows a slight improvement in the spatial distribution of clouds. This suggests that assimilating rain gauge data available during data-sparse periods of the past might help to improve the quality of future reanalyses and subsequent forecasts.


1999 ◽  
Vol 35 (8) ◽  
pp. 2487-2503 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Steiner ◽  
James A. Smith ◽  
Stephen J. Burges ◽  
Carlos V. Alonso ◽  
Robert W. Darden

Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 1661 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohd. Rizaludin Mahmud ◽  
Aina Afifah Mohd Yusof ◽  
Mohd Nadzri Mohd Reba ◽  
Mazlan Hashim

In this study, half-hourly Global Precipitation Mission (GPM) satellite precipitation data were downscaled to produce high-resolution daily rainfall data for tropical coastal micro-watersheds (100–1000 ha) without gauges or with rainfall data conflicts. Currently, daily-scale satellite rainfall downscaling techniques rely on rain gauge data as corrective and controlling factors, making them impractical for ungauged watersheds or watersheds with rainfall data conflicts. Therefore, we used high-resolution local orographic and vertical velocity data as proxies to downscale half-hourly GPM precipitation data (0.1°) to high-resolution daily rainfall data (0.02°). The overall quality of the downscaled product was similar to or better than the quality of the raw GPM data. The downscaled rainfall dataset improved the accuracy of rainfall estimates on the ground, with lower error relative to measured rain gauge data. The average error was reduced from 41 to 27 mm/d and from 16 to 12 mm/d during the wet and dry seasons, respectively. Estimates of localized rainfall patterns were improved from 38% to 73%. The results of this study will be useful for production of high-resolution satellite precipitation data in ungauged tropical micro-watersheds.


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (12) ◽  
pp. 2347-2365 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ali Jozaghi ◽  
Mohammad Nabatian ◽  
Seongjin Noh ◽  
Dong-Jun Seo ◽  
Lin Tang ◽  
...  

Abstract We describe and evaluate adaptive conditional bias–penalized cokriging (CBPCK) for improved multisensor precipitation estimation using rain gauge data and remotely sensed quantitative precipitation estimates (QPE). The remotely sensed QPEs used are radar-only and radar–satellite-fused estimates. For comparative evaluation, true validation is carried out over the continental United States (CONUS) for 13–30 September 2015 and 7–9 October 2016. The hourly gauge data, radar-only QPE, and satellite QPE used are from the Hydrometeorological Automated Data System, Multi-Radar Multi-Sensor System, and Self-Calibrating Multivariate Precipitation Retrieval (SCaMPR), respectively. For radar–satellite fusion, conditional bias–penalized Fisher estimation is used. The reference merging technique compared is ordinary cokriging (OCK) used in the National Weather Service Multisensor Precipitation Estimator. It is shown that, beyond the reduction due to mean field bias (MFB) correction, both OCK and adaptive CBPCK additionally reduce the unconditional root-mean-square error (RMSE) of radar-only QPE by 9%–16% over the CONUS for the two periods, and that adaptive CBPCK is superior to OCK for estimation of hourly amounts exceeding 1 mm. When fused with the MFB-corrected radar QPE, the MFB-corrected SCaMPR QPE for September 2015 reduces the unconditional RMSE of the MFB-corrected radar by 4% and 6% over the entire and western half of the CONUS, respectively, but is inferior to the MFB-corrected radar for estimation of hourly amounts exceeding 7 mm. Adaptive CBPCK should hence be favored over OCK for estimation of significant amounts of precipitation despite larger computational cost, and the SCaMPR QPE should be used selectively in multisensor QPE.


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