Does More Moisture in the Atmosphere Lead to More Intense Rains?

It is typically interpreted that more moisture in the atmosphere leads to more intense rains. This notion may be supported, for example, by taking a scatter plot between rain and column precipitable water. The present paper suggests, however, that the main consequence of intense rains with more moistures in the atmosphere is that there is a more chance to happen, rather than of an increase in the expected magnitude. This tendency equally applies to any rains above 1 mm/6h to a lesser extent. The result is derived from an analysis of 33 local rain–gauge station data and a shared sounding over Friuli Venezia Giulia, North–East Italy.

Accuracy assessment and error cause analysis of GPM (V06) in Xiangjiang river catchment

Application potential and development prospect of satellite precipitation products such as Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) and Global Precipitation Mission (GPM) have promising implications. This study discusses causes of spatiotemporal differences on GPM data through the following steps: Initially, calculate bias between satellite-based data and rain gauge data of Xiangjiang river catchment to assess the accuracy of GPM (06E, 06 L, and 06F) products. Second, total errors of satellite precipitation data are divided into hit bias (HBIAS: precipitation detected by both GPM and rain gauge station), missed precipitation (MBIAS: precipitation detected only by rain gauge station), and false precipitation (FBIAS: precipitation detected only by GPM). Third, evaluate the impact of precipitation intensity and total precipitation on accuracy of GPM data and their influence on three error components. Several conclusions are drawn from the results above: (1) Satellite-based precipitation measurements perform better on a larger temporal-spatial scale. (2) The accuracy of TRMM and GPM data displays significant variances on space and time. Season, precipitation intensity, and total precipitation are main factors influencing the accuracy of TRMM and GPM data. (3) The detection capability of satellite products change with seasonal variation and different precipitation intensity level.

Contamination Vulnerability Analysis of Watershed for Water Quality Monitoring

This research is an early step to determine the location of rain gauge station for artificial neural network modeling. The implementation of this model is very useful for water quality monitoring. The objectives of this study are: 1) to study the distribution of watershed parameter, that are average annual precipitation, land use and land-surface slope, 2) to conduct vulnerability analysis of watershed contamination, 3) to determine the location of rain gauge station. The study was performed by weighing and rating method of watershed parameters. The vulnerability degree of watershedtocontaminationispresentedasvulnerabilityindex.Thisindexisdeterminedbyoverallsumofallmultiplication between score and weigh number of each parameter. All data manipulation and data analysis were performed by using Geographic Information System (ArcView version by 3.2). The vulnerability of watershed contamination map had been generated using overlay operation of parameters. The results show that vulnerability index are varies between 10 up to 40 intervals. Hence, the indexes were categorized into three levels of watershed vulnerability, namely low (10 – 20), moderate (20 – 30) and high (30 – 40). It is found that the study area covered more by high vulnerability of watershed to contamination. The zoning of watershed vulnerability meant to determine the rain gauge location. There are three rain gauge stations on the area that they are in a high vulnerability level, whereas the other vulnerability level area has one rain gauge station. Each level of vulnerability area is able to represent the source of contaminant that it maybe influence the water quality of Gajahwong river.

Toward a practical approach for ergodicity analysis

It is of importance to perform hydrological forecast using a finite hydrological time series. Most time series analysis approaches presume a data series to be ergodic without justifying this assumption. This paper presents a practical approach to analyze the mean ergodic property of hydrological processes by means of autocorrelation function evaluation and Augmented Dickey Fuller test, a radial basis function neural network, and the definition of mean ergodicity. The mean ergodicity of precipitation processes at the Lanzhou Rain Gauge Station in the Yellow River basin, the Ankang Rain Gauge Station in Han River, both in China, and at Newberry, MI, USA are analyzed using the proposed approach. The results indicate that the precipitations of March, July, and August in Lanzhou, and of May, June, and August in Ankang have mean ergodicity, whereas, the precipitation of any other calendar month in these two rain gauge stations do not have mean ergodicity. The precipitation of February, May, July, and December in Newberry show ergodic property, although the precipitation of each month shows a clear increasing or decreasing trend.

Comparison of TRMM Data with Rain Gauge Observations in the Upper Huaihe River Basin of China

In this study, the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) version 7 satellite rainfall product, TRMM 3B42 (V7), was validated using rain gauge measurements in the Upper Huaihe Basin, China. This validation was carried out at monthly and annual temporal scales for an 11-year period using four selected grids with six, four, two and one rain gauge station (s) located within the TRMM grid respectively; the rain gage measurements for grids with more than one rain gauge were averaged. This study found that the validation of the TRMM dataset in grids where there were adequate rain gauge were present to capture the distributed and stochastic nature of rainfall with very good correlation (0.87-0.94) and with very little relative bias when the rain gage accumulations were compared with the TRMM estimates. From the study we found that the TRMM dataset can be used as precipitation input for hydrological modeling at monthly and annual scales for sustainable water resources management in the Upper Huaihe River and even in un-gaged or sparsely gaged basins in other parts of the world.