Extracting the Event Characteristics of Rainfall
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 29, Issue 5
Abstract
A method is proposed and demonstrated for extracting the spatial and temporal characteristics of individual rainfall events using hourly rainfall measurements at an array of rain gauges. The method is based on identifying the probabilities of overlapping rainfall events at the rain gauge locations. The method is demonstrated in a area covered by 150 rain gauges with 17 years of unbroken hourly data. The results show that the length scales of individual events in the wet season are in the range of 1.2–18.3 km depending on the event magnitude, and dry season events with corresponding magnitudes have length scales in the range of 1.5–35.9 km. The timescales of wet and dry season events generally increase with event magnitude in both seasons. The shapes and locations of cluster areas that tend to have overlapping rainfall events are substantially different between seasons, being smaller and more dispersed in the wet season and larger and lesser in number in the dry season.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Data Availability Statement
All of the data used in this study were provided by the South Florida Water Management District via their online database DBHYDRO, which can be accessed at https://www.sfwmd.gov/science-data/dbhydro. The MATLAB code used in these analyses is available from the author upon reasonable request.
References
Abtew, W., R. S. Huebner, and C. Pathak. 2007. “Hydrology and hydraulics of South Florida.” In Proc., World Environmental & Water Resources Congress, 1–14. Reston, VA: ASCE.
Adams, R., A. Western, and A. Seed. 2012. “An analysis of the impact of spatial variability in rainfall on runoff and sediment predictions from a distributed model.” Hydrol. Processes 26 (21): 3263–3280. https://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.8435.
Cao, S., Y. Diao, J. Wang, Y. Liu, A. Raimondi, and J. Wang. 2023. “KDE-based rainfall event separation and characterization.” Water 15 (3): 580. https://doi.org/10.3390/w15030580.
Driscoll, E., G. Palhegyi, E. Strecker, and P. Shelley. 1989. Analysis of storm event characteristics for selected rainfall gages thoughout the United States. Washington, DC: USEPA.
Essien, A., Y. Guo, and S. Dickson-Anderson. 2023. “Extensive rainfall data analysis: Event separation from continuous record, fitting of theoretical distributions, and event-based trend detection.” Environ. Sci.: Adv. 2 (5): 695–708. https://doi.org/10.1039/D2VA00294A.
Fan, C., S. Lin, and D. Chen. 2021. “Spatial correlations of daily precipitation over mainland China.” Int. J. Climatol. 41 (14): 6350–6365. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.7199.
Florida Climate Center. 2024. “Office of the state climatologist.” Accessed February 19, 2024. https://climatecenter.fsu.edu/.
Guo, J. C. Y., and B. Urbonas. 2002. “Runoff capture and delivery curves for storm-water quality control designs.” J. Water Resour. Plann. Manage. 128 (3): 208–215. https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)0733-9496(2002)128:3(208).
Huff, F. 1967. “Time distribution of rainfall in heavy storms.” Water Resour. Res. 3 (4): 1007–1019. https://doi.org/10.1029/WR003i004p01007.
Israelsson, J., E. Black, C. Neves, F. Torgbor, H. Greatrex, M. Tanu, and P. Lamptey. 2020. “The spatial correlation structure of rainfall at the local scale over southern Ghana.” J. Hydrol.: Reg. Stud. 31 (Oct): 100720. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejrh.2020.100720.
Luini, L., and C. Capsoni. 2012. “The impact of space and time averaging on the spatial correlation of rainfall.” Radio Sci. 47 (Jan): RS3013. https://doi.org/10.1029/2011RS004915.
Maier, R., G. Kreb, M. Pichler, D. Muschalla, and G. Gruber. 2020. “Spatial rainfall variability in urban environments—High-density precipitation measurements on a city-scale.” Water 12 (4): 1157. https://doi.org/10.3390/w12041157.
Mei, Y., E. Anagnostou, D. Stampoulis, E. Nikolopoulos, M. Borga, and H. Vegara. 2014. “Rainfall organization control on the flood response of mild-slope basins.” J. Hydrol. 510 (Aug): 565–577. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2013.12.013.
Moron, V., A. Robertson, M. Ward, and P. Camberlin. 2007. “Spatial coherence of tropical rainfall at the regional scale.” J. Clim. 20 (21): 5244–5263. https://doi.org/10.1175/2007JCLI1623.1.
Pedersen, L., N. Jensen, L. Christensen, and H. Madsen. 2010. “Quantification of the spatial variability of rainfall based on a dense network of rain gauges.” Atmos. Res. 95 (4): 441–454. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosres.2009.11.007.
Restrepo-Posada, P. J., and P. S. Eagleson. 1982. “Identification of independent rainstorms.” J. Hydrol. 55: 303–319. https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-1694(82)90136-6.
Rodríguez, R., X. Navarro, M. Casas, and A. Redaño. 2013. “Rainfall spatial organization and areal reduction factors in the metropolitan area of Barcelona (Spain).” Theor. Appl. Climatol. 114 (1–2): 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-012-0818-4.
Saharia, M., P.-E. Kirstette, H. Vergara, J. Gourley, I. Emmanuel, and H. Andrieu. 2021. “On the impact of rainfall spatial variability, geomorphology, and climatology on flash floods.” Water Resour. Res. 57 (9): e2020WR029124. https://doi.org/10.1029/2020WR029124.
Urbonas, B., J. Guo, and K. MacKenzie. 2011. “The case for a water quality capture volume for stormwater BMPs.” Accessed October 7, 2023. https://www.stormwater.com/home/article/13006519/the-case-for-a-water-quality-capture-volume-for-stormwater-bmps.
USEPA. 1986. Methodology for analysis of detention basins for control of urban runoff quality. EPA 440/5-87-001. Washington, DC: Office of Water.
UWRI (Urban Watersheds Research Institute). 2020. User’s manual, water quality capture optimization and statistics model, (WQ-COSM) v3.1. Denver: UWRI.
van Leth, T., H. Leijnse, A. Overeem, and R. Uijlenhoet. 2021. “Rainfall spatiotemporal correlation and intermittency structure from micro- to meso- scale in the Netherlands.” J. Hydrometeorol. 22 (Aug): 2227–2240. https://doi.org/10.1175/JHM-D-20-0311.1.
Wang, W., S. Yin, Y. Xie, and M. Nearing. 2019. “Minimum inter-event times for rainfall in the eastern monsoon region of China.” Trans. ASABE 62 (1): 9–18. https://doi.org/10.13031/trans.12878.
Zhuang, Q., S. Liu, and Z. Zhou. 2020. “Spatial heterogeneity analysis of short-duration extreme rainfall events in megacities in China.” Water 12 (12): 3364. https://doi.org/10.3390/w12123364.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Copyright
© 2024 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jan 1, 2024
Accepted: Mar 27, 2024
Published online: Jul 3, 2024
Published in print: Oct 1, 2024
Discussion open until: Dec 3, 2024
ASCE Technical Topics:
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.