Identification

Title

Measurements of heavy convective rainfall in the presence of hail in flood-prone areas using an X-band polarimetric radar

Abstract

The utility of X-band polarimetric radar to provide rainfall estimations with high spatial and temporal resolution in heavy convective precipitation in the presence of hail is explored. A case study involving observations of strong convective cells with a transportable polarimetric X-band radar near Boulder, Colorado, is presented. These cells produced rain-hail mixtures with a significant liquid fraction, causing local flash floods and debris flow in an environmentally sensitive burn area that had been previously affected by wildfire. It is demonstrated that the specific differential phase shift (KDP)-based rainfall estimator provided liquid accumulations that were in relatively good agreement with a network of high-density rain gauges and experimental disdrometers. This estimator was also able to capture the significant variability of accumulated rainfall in a relatively small area of interest, and the corresponding results were not significantly affected by hail. Hail presence, however, was a likely reason for significant overestimation of rainfall retrievals for X-band radar approaches that are based on radar-reflectivity Ze measurements that have been corrected for attenuation in rain. Even greater overestimations were observed with the S-band radar of the weather-service network. In part because of larger range distances, these radar data could not correctly reproduce the spatial variability of rainfall in the burn area.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d78916pj

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2013-02-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

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version of format

Constraints related to access and use

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Use constraints

Copyright 2013 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law (17 USC, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the Society's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statements, requires written permission or license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policies, available from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or amspubs@ametsoc.org. Permission to place a copy of this work on this server has been provided by the AMS. The AMS does not guarantee that the copy provided here is an accurate copy of the published work.

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact