HR: 1330h
AN: H23A-05    [Abstracts]
TI: Estimating Watershed Accumulated Precipitation From Radar and Gage Data
AU: * Murphy, M A
EM: mamurph@cs.clemson.edu
AF: Department of Forestry and Natural Resources, Clemson University, 261 Lehotsky Hall, Clemson, SC 29634 United States
AU: Post, C J
EM: cpost@clemson.edu
AF: Department of Forestry and Natural Resources, Clemson University, 261 Lehotsky Hall, Clemson, SC 29634 United States
AB: Radar-derived precipitation estimates are potentially valuable for studies whereground weather station rainfall data is not available at sufficient spatial density to account for precipitation variation over a study area. Stage IV precipitation analyses are one of the national products produced by the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP). This product combines data from Doppler weather radar precipitation estimates and surface rain gages to produce an estimate of rainfall coverage. Stage IV analyses are distributed via NCEP FTP servers in a Gridded Binary (GRIB) format, which is not directly useful for calculating a total accumulation. Therefore, the purpose of this project was to develop a computer program that can process data from this GRIB file and produce a useful result in terms of total rainfall over a watershed described in a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) format. A number of mathematical and computational issues were resolved in order to make this program efficient and effective. Tests were conducted to validate the program's approximation against surface gage measurements, and potential extensions of the algorithm were identified.
DE: 1854 Precipitation (3354)
DE: 1860 Runoff and streamflow
DE: 1894 Instruments and techniques
DE: 3354 Precipitation (1854)
DE: 3360 Remote sensing
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2005 Joint Assembly