Using Radar Data to Partition Precipitation into Rain and Snow in a Hydrologic Model
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 11, Issue 3
Abstract
Simulation of whether precipitation arrives at the land surface in a liquid or frozen state can have a pronounced effect on the peak flows produced by a hydrologic model. While many hydrologic models rely on surface air temperature to discriminate precipitation type, both past studies and the current effort indicate that there can be substantial shortcomings in that approach. As an alternative, the level detected by a vertically pointing radar is used in two modes, one by ingesting the level directly into a hydrologic model to determine precipitation type at the land surface, and a second by deriving average surface air temperature thresholds using the radar data. Where snowfall and snow melt are important, using radar-detected levels can provide a measurable improvement in simulated flow response. The derived surface air temperature thresholds recovered most of the benefit for streamflow prediction obtained by using the level directly in the hydrologic model for the period concurrent with the radar observations, but these temperature thresholds were not generally transferable to other regions or periods.
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Acknowledgments
This project was supported in part by the National Science FoundationNSF, and by a David Packard Faculty Fellowship through Santa Clara University to the first writer. The writers are indebted to Socorro Medina and Jasmine Cetrone of the University of Washington, Department of Atmospheric Sciences for providing radar-detected bright band levels for the IMPROVE-2 period. The writers are also indebted to the insightful comments of three anonymous reviewers of this manuscript.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 11 • Issue 3 • May 2006
Pages: 214 - 221
Copyright
© 2006 ASCE.
History
Received: Jun 10, 2004
Accepted: Aug 9, 2005
Published online: May 1, 2006
Published in print: May 2006
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