scholarly journals Comparison of drought indicators derived from multiple data sets over Africa

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (5) ◽  
pp. 1625-1640 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Naumann ◽  
E. Dutra ◽  
P. Barbosa ◽  
F. Pappenberger ◽  
F. Wetterhall ◽  
...  

Abstract. Drought monitoring is a key component to mitigate impacts of droughts. Lack of reliable and up-to-date precipitation data sets is a common challenge across the globe. This study investigates different data sets and drought indicators on their capability to improve drought monitoring in Africa. The study was performed for four river basins located in different climatic regions (the Oum er-Rbia in Morocco, the Blue Nile in eastern Africa, the Upper Niger in western Africa, and the Limpopo in southeastern Africa) as well as the Greater Horn of Africa. The five precipitation data sets compared are the ECMWF ERA-Interim reanalysis, the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite monthly rainfall product 3B-43, the Global Precipitation Climatology Centre gridded precipitation data set, the Global Precipitation Climatology Project Global Monthly Merged Precipitation Analyses, and the Climate Prediction Center Merged Analysis of Precipitation. The set of drought indicators used includes the Standardized Precipitation Index, the Standardized Precipitation-Evaporation Index, and Soil Moisture Anomalies. A comparison of the annual cycle and monthly precipitation time series shows a good agreement in the timing of the rainy seasons. The main differences between the data sets are in the ability to represent the magnitude of the wet seasons and extremes. Moreover, for the areas affected by drought, all the drought indicators agree on the time of drought onset and recovery although there is disagreement on the extent of the affected area. In regions with limited rain gauge data the estimation of the different drought indicators is characterized by a higher uncertainty. Further comparison suggests that the main source of differences in the computation of the drought indicators is the uncertainty in the precipitation data sets rather than the estimation of the distribution parameters of the drought indicators.

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 13407-13440 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Naumann ◽  
E. Dutra ◽  
P. Barbosa ◽  
F. Pappenberger ◽  
F. Wetterhall ◽  
...  

Abstract. Drought monitoring is a key component to mitigate impacts of droughts. Lack of reliable and up-to-date datasets is a common challenge across the Globe. This study investigates different datasets and drought indicators on their capability to improve drought monitoring in Africa. The study was performed for four river basins located in different climatic regions (the Oum er-Rbia in Morocco, the Blue Nile in Eastern Africa, the Upper Niger in Western Africa, and the Limpopo in South-Eastern Africa) as well as the Greater Horn of Africa. The five precipitation datasets compared are the ECMWF ERA – Interim reanalysis, the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite monthly rainfall product 3B43, the Global Precipitation Climatology Centre gridded precipitation dataset, the Global Precipitation Climatology Project Global Monthly Merged Precipitation Analyses, and the Climate Prediction Center Merged Analysis of Precipitation. The set of drought indicators used includes the Standardized Precipitation Index, the Standardized Precipitation–Evaporation Index, Soil Moisture Anomalies and Potential Evapotranspiration. A comparison of the annual cycle and monthly precipitation time series shows a good agreement in the timing of the rainy seasons. The main differences between the datasets are in the ability to represent the magnitude of the wet seasons and extremes. Moreover, for the areas affected by drought, all the drought indicators agree on the time of drought onset and recovery although there is disagreement on the extent of the affected area. In regions with limited rain gauge data the estimation of the different drought indicators is characterised by a higher uncertainty. Further comparison suggests that the main source of error in the computation of the drought indicators is the uncertainty in the precipitation datasets rather than the estimation of the distribution parameters of the drought indicators.


2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Becker ◽  
P. Finger ◽  
A. Meyer-Christoffer ◽  
B. Rudolf ◽  
K. Schamm ◽  
...  

Abstract. The availability of highly accessible and reliable monthly gridded data sets of global land-surface precipitation is a need that was already identified in the mid-1980s when there was a complete lack of globally homogeneous gauge-based precipitation analyses. Since 1989, the Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC) has built up its unique capacity to assemble, quality assure, and analyse rain gauge data gathered from all over the world. The resulting database has exceeded 200 yr in temporal coverage and has acquired data from more than 85 000 stations worldwide. Based on this database, this paper provides the reference publication for the four globally gridded monthly precipitation products of the GPCC, covering a 111-yr analysis period from 1901–present. As required for a reference publication, the content of the product portfolio, as well as the underlying methodologies to process and interpolate are detailed. Moreover, we provide information on the systematic and statistical errors associated with the data products. Finally, sample applications provide potential users of GPCC data products with suitable advice on capabilities and constraints of the gridded data sets. In doing so, the capabilities to access El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) sensitive precipitation regions and to perform trend analyses across the past 110 yr are demonstrated. The four gridded products, i.e. the Climatology (CLIM) V2011, the Full Data Reanalysis (FD) V6, the Monitoring Product (MP) V4, and the First Guess Product (FG), are publicly available on easily accessible latitude/longitude grids encoded in zipped clear text ASCII files for subsequent visualization and download through the GPCC download gate hosted on ftp://ftp.dwd.de/pub/data/gpcc/html/download_gate.html by the Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD), Offenbach, Germany. Depending on the product, four (0.25°, 0.5°, 1.0°, 2.5° for CLIM), three (0.5°, 1.0°, 2.5°, for FD), two (1.0°, 2.5° for MP) or one (1.0° for FG) resolution is provided, and for each product a DOI reference is provided allowing for public user access to the products. A preliminary description of the scope of a fifth product – the Homogenized Precipitation Analysis (HOMPRA) – is also provided. Its comprehensive description will be submitted later in an extra paper upon completion of this data product. DOIs of the gridded data sets examined are as follows: doi:10.5676/DWD_GPCC/CLIM_M_V2011_025, doi:10.5676/DWD_GPCC/CLIM_M_V2011_050, doi:10.5676/DWD_GPCC/CLIM_M_V2011_100, doi:10.5676/DWD_GPCC/CLIM_M_V2011_250, doi:10.5676/DWD_GPCC/FD_M_V6_050, doi:10.5676/DWD_GPCC/FD_M_V6_100, doi:10.5676/DWD_GPCC/FD_M_V6_250, doi:10.5676/DWD_GPCC/MP_M_V4_100, doi:10.5676/DWD_GPCC/MP_M_V4_250, doi:10.5676/DWD_GPCC/FG_M_100.


Author(s):  
Chris Goller ◽  
James Simek ◽  
Jed Ludlow

The purpose of this paper is to present a non-traditional pipeline mechanical damage ranking system using multiple-data-set in-line inspection (ILI) tools. Mechanical damage continues to be a major factor in reportable incidents for hazardous liquid and gas pipelines. While several ongoing programs seek to limit damage incidents through public awareness, encroachment monitoring, and one-call systems, others have focused efforts on the quantification of mechanical damage severity through modeling, the use of ILI tools, and subsequent feature assessment at locations selected for excavation. Current generation ILI tools capable of acquiring multiple-data-sets in a single survey may provide an improved assessment of the severity of damaged zones using methods developed in earlier research programs as well as currently reported information. For magnetic flux leakage (MFL) type tools, using multiple field levels, varied field directions, and high accuracy deformation sensors enables detection and provides the data necessary for enhanced severity assessments. This paper will provide a review of multiple-data-set ILI results from several pipe joints with simulated mechanical damage locations created mimicing right-of-way encroachment events in addition to field results from ILI surveys using multiple-data-set tools.


Climate ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (10) ◽  
pp. 116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nir Y. Krakauer ◽  
Tarendra Lakhankar ◽  
Ghulam H. Dars

A large population relies on water input to the Indus basin, yet basinwide precipitation amounts and trends are not well quantified. Gridded precipitation data sets covering different time periods and based on either station observations, satellite remote sensing, or reanalysis were compared with available station observations and analyzed for basinwide precipitation trends. Compared to observations, some data sets tended to greatly underestimate precipitation, while others overestimate it. Additionally, the discrepancies between data set and station precipitation showed significant time trends in such cases, suggesting that the precipitation trends of those data sets were not consistent with station data. Among the data sets considered, the station-based Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC) gridded data set showed good agreement with observations in terms of mean amount, trend, and spatial and temporal pattern. GPCC had average precipitation of about 500 mm per year over the basin and an increase in mean precipitation of about 15% between 1891 and 2016. For the more recent past, since 1958 or 1979, no significant precipitation trend was seen. Among the remote sensing based data sets, the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission Multi-Satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA) compared best to station observations and, though available for a shorter time period than station-based data sets such as GPCC, may be especially valuable for parts of the basin without station data. The reanalyses tended to have substantial biases in precipitation mean amount or trend relative to the station data. This assessment of precipitation data set quality and precipitation trends over the Indus basin may be helpful for water planning and management.


2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (9) ◽  
pp. 1369-1383 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dirk Diederen ◽  
Ye Liu

Abstract With the ongoing development of distributed hydrological models, flood risk analysis calls for synthetic, gridded precipitation data sets. The availability of large, coherent, gridded re-analysis data sets in combination with the increase in computational power, accommodates the development of new methodology to generate such synthetic data. We tracked moving precipitation fields and classified them using self-organising maps. For each class, we fitted a multivariate mixture model and generated a large set of synthetic, coherent descriptors, which we used to reconstruct moving synthetic precipitation fields. We introduced randomness in the original data set by replacing the observed precipitation fields in the original data set with the synthetic precipitation fields. The output is a continuous, gridded, hourly precipitation data set of a much longer duration, containing physically plausible and spatio-temporally coherent precipitation events. The proposed methodology implicitly provides an important improvement in the spatial coherence of precipitation extremes. We investigate the issue of unrealistic, sudden changes on the grid and demonstrate how a dynamic spatio-temporal generator can provide spatial smoothness in the probability distribution parameters and hence in the return level estimates.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (23) ◽  
pp. 4007
Author(s):  
Kasra Rafiezadeh Shahi ◽  
Pedram Ghamisi ◽  
Behnood Rasti ◽  
Robert Jackisch ◽  
Paul Scheunders ◽  
...  

The increasing amount of information acquired by imaging sensors in Earth Sciences results in the availability of a multitude of complementary data (e.g., spectral, spatial, elevation) for monitoring of the Earth’s surface. Many studies were devoted to investigating the usage of multi-sensor data sets in the performance of supervised learning-based approaches at various tasks (i.e., classification and regression) while unsupervised learning-based approaches have received less attention. In this paper, we propose a new approach to fuse multiple data sets from imaging sensors using a multi-sensor sparse-based clustering algorithm (Multi-SSC). A technique for the extraction of spatial features (i.e., morphological profiles (MPs) and invariant attribute profiles (IAPs)) is applied to high spatial-resolution data to derive the spatial and contextual information. This information is then fused with spectrally rich data such as multi- or hyperspectral data. In order to fuse multi-sensor data sets a hierarchical sparse subspace clustering approach is employed. More specifically, a lasso-based binary algorithm is used to fuse the spectral and spatial information prior to automatic clustering. The proposed framework ensures that the generated clustering map is smooth and preserves the spatial structures of the scene. In order to evaluate the generalization capability of the proposed approach, we investigate its performance not only on diverse scenes but also on different sensors and data types. The first two data sets are geological data sets, which consist of hyperspectral and RGB data. The third data set is the well-known benchmark Trento data set, including hyperspectral and LiDAR data. Experimental results indicate that this novel multi-sensor clustering algorithm can provide an accurate clustering map compared to the state-of-the-art sparse subspace-based clustering algorithms.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 4239-4260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Anthes ◽  
Therese Rieckh

Abstract. In this paper we show how multiple data sets, including observations and models, can be combined using the “three-cornered hat” (3CH) method to estimate vertical profiles of the errors of each system. Using data from 2007, we estimate the error variances of radio occultation (RO), radiosondes, ERA-Interim, and Global Forecast System (GFS) model data sets at four radiosonde locations in the tropics and subtropics. A key assumption is the neglect of error covariances among the different data sets, and we examine the consequences of this assumption on the resulting error estimates. Our results show that different combinations of the four data sets yield similar relative and specific humidity, temperature, and refractivity error variance profiles at the four stations, and these estimates are consistent with previous estimates where available. These results thus indicate that the correlations of the errors among all data sets are small and the 3CH method yields realistic error variance profiles. The estimated error variances of the ERA-Interim data set are smallest, a reasonable result considering the excellent model and data assimilation system and assimilation of high-quality observations. For the four locations studied, RO has smaller error variances than radiosondes, in agreement with previous studies. Part of the larger error variance of the radiosondes is associated with representativeness differences because radiosondes are point measurements, while the other data sets represent horizontal averages over scales of ∼ 100 km.


2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qiaohong Sun ◽  
Chiyuan Miao ◽  
Qingyun Duan ◽  
Hamed Ashouri ◽  
Soroosh Sorooshian ◽  
...  

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