Precipitation products

To access these data, click on the DOI: 10.7924/G8MW2F2W   
 

Report: The Integrated Precipitation and Hydrology Experiment - Hydrologic Applications for the Southeast US (IPHEx-H4SE) Part III: High-Resolution Ensemble Rainfall Products 
 

 

Hourly precipitation fields at 1km resolution for the five year period (January/2007 to December/2011) are generated from NCEP/EMC 4KM Gridded Data (GRIB) Stage IV datasets using different downscaling methodologies (see Table 1). A baseline precipitation product is provided using a simple bi-linear interpolation method (StageIV_Bi). The downscaling procedures used here are based on previous work by Bindlish and Barros (1996) and subsequent work by Rebora et al. (2006), where a simple modified fractal interpolation is used for spatial disaggregation of a geophysical field in the Fourier spectral domain. These fields conserve the structure in the coarse resolution observations and enhance the small-scale variability and statistics, adding value to the original field and displaying more coherent structure than bilinear interpolation which smoothes out much of the small-scale variability.Preliminary tests show that for operational hydrology applications in IPHEx-H4SE the fractal downscaled precipitation products should be robust QPE.

For details on downscaling methodologies and preliminary tests of the datasets see the report .

Name

Dataset description

Resolution

Period of availability

Domain of availability

StageIV_Bi

 

Stage IV downscaled to 1km using bilinear interpolation

1 km -

1 hr

Jan/2007 – Dec/2011

 IPHEX domain

StageIV_TF*

 

Stage IV downscaled to 1km using fractal interpolation with transient b value.

1 km -

1 hr

Jan/2007 – Dec/2011

 IPHEX domain

StageIV_FF**

 

Stage IV downscaled to 1km using fractal interpolation with ensemble b value.

1 km -

1 hr

Jan/2007 – Dec/2011

 IPHEX domain

Q2_GC #

 

Product Q2RAD_HSR_GC gauge corrected with data from dense raingauge observation network in the Pigeon River Basin (Tao and Barros, 2013) 
 

1 km -

1 hr

Jul/2008 – Oct/2011

Pigeon River Basin

Table 1 - Details about the different data sets.  

* Indicates the ensemble mean of 50 realizations . These 50 realizations are not available for downloading from the IPHEX website, but can be made available upon request . Users interested in the full set of 50 realizations for each hour for the 5 years or for a selected period should contact Dr. Ana Barros (barros@duke.edu) . Please see report EPL-2013-IPHEX-H4SE-3 for details. 
 

** product not available for downloading from the IPHEX website, but can be made available upon request. Please contact Dr. Ana Barros (barros@duke.edu) . Please see report EPL-2013-IPHEX-H4SE-3 for details.

# to be made available soon.  

 

1. Bindlish, R., and Barros., A. P., 1996: Aggregation of digital terrain data using a modified fractal interpolation scheme. Comput. Geosci. (UK), 22, 907 – 917.

2. Rebora, N., Ferraris, L., von Hardenber, J., and Provenzale, A., 2006: RainFARM: Rainfall Downscaling by a Filtered Autoregressive Model. J. Hydrometeor., 7, 724-738.

3. Tao, J., Barros, A.P., 2013. Prospects for flash flood forecasting in mountainous regions – An investigation of Tropical Storm Fay in the Southern Appalachians. J. Hydrol., 506(0): 69-89.