CE 3342 Water Resources

Engineering – Lecture 5
Precipitation observation and
estimation

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 Announcements
• Homework No. 1 on Blackboard
– Due Jan 28 (Mon)
• TA – Mr. Ali Jozaghi, ali.jozaghi@mavs.uta.edu
– Tuesday 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
– Thursday 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
• Exam dates
– Mid-Term Exam 1 on Feb 15 (Fri)
– Mid-Term Exam 2 on Mar 29 (Fri)
– Final Exam on May 10 (Fri)

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 Today’s topics
• Rain gauges
• Weather radar
• Z-R relationship

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 Recording precipitation gages
• There are two common types of recording precipitation
gages, weighing and tipping bucket gages.
• Weighing gages collect precipitation, typically through a
funnel, and record the weight of precipitation as a
function of time.

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 Recording precipitation gauges (cont.)
• Tipping bucket gages consist of a container with a funnel at the top
leading to a pair of small "buckets" attached to a fulcrum. When one
bucket fills with water, it tips, emptying the water and moving the
other bucket beneath the outlet of the funnel.
• The device records the time at which the bucket tips, and so the
time over which a certain amount of precipitation fell (e.g., 0.25 mm
for a bucket of a certain size) is recorded.

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 Snow measurement
• The measurement of precipitation in the form of snow presents
additional difficulty.
• Gages must be heated, for example, to reduce the precipitation
to water equivalent.
– Snow water equivalent (SWE)
• In mountainous areas, in particular, it can be difficult to keep a
standard gage running through the winter.
• Snow pillows, devices that record the pressure at the base of a
snowpack, and snow surveys, in which teams periodically go into
the field and take cores of snow along transects to estimate
depth of snow, are among alternative measurement methods.

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 Snow measurement (cont.)
• The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) in
the United States maintains approximately 500
SNOwpack TELemetry sites in remote mountainous
areas of the western United States at which data from
snow pillows are collected automatically and
continuously.
• Nevertheless, point measurements of precipitation in the
form of snow in mountainous areas are collected on a
much sparser network than are rainfall data in lower-
lying areas.

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How a snow pillow works

http://wsoweb.ladwp.com/Aqueduct/snow/pillow.htm 11
Snow water equivalent (SWE)
• The depth of water that would result if you melted the
entire snowpack instantaneously
• Used for streamflow forecasting
– many scientists and recreationists are interested in
snow depth instead of SWE
– SWE (in)=Snow Depth (in) x Snowpack Density (%)/100
– In the Cascades, snowpack densities are around 20-30% in
the winter to 30-50% in the spring
– In the east of the Cascades, typical values are 10-20% in the
winter and 20-40% in the spring

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http://www.nohrsc.noaa.gov/nsa
/

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Undercatch of snow due to wind

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http://www.erh.noaa.gov/aly/COOP/Equipment/UWG.htm 15
 Rain gauge networks

The HADS (left) and the COOP (right) gauge networks

HADS: Hydrometeorological Automated Data System (OHD-NWS)

https://www.cocorahs.org/
• http://www.nws.noaa.gov/oh/hads/
• http://www.weather.gov/om/coop/ 16
 City-operated networks

http://www.ci.dallas.tx.us/sts/html/fc.html

https://
www.gptx.org/city-government/city-departments/planning-d
evelopment/floodplain/flood-warnings-and-disaster-prepar
edness

http://fortworthtexas.gov/floodwarning/

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 Real-Time Flash Flood Forecasting for DFW
Trinity River Basin

http://water.weather.gov/precip/
The WSR-88D network

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 How radar works
• http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co
mmons/0/07/Radarops.gif

• http://apollo.lsc.vsc.edu/classes/remote/

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 Radar equation
The average received power (W) is related to the transmitter
power Pt (W) via the following radar equation (Battan 1973,
Doviak and Zrnic 1993):

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 20 Pt G   h K Z
2 2 3

Pr  10
1024 ln 22 r 2
where G denotes the antenna gain (dimensionless), θ denotes
the half power beam width (rad), h denotes the pulse width (m),
Κ denotes the complex dielectric factor of the targets
(dimensionless), Z denotes the reflectivity factor (mm 6/m3) , λ
denotes the wavelength of the radar (cm), and r denotes the
distance to the target (km).
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Comparison between transmitted and
received power

• Pt = 250 kW, pr = 10-10.7 mW, so

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pt 250kW 10 mW
 10.7   1.25 10  191dB
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pr 10 mW kW

From http://moodle.ucs.louisiana.edu/course/view.php?id=1539
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 Reflectivity factor
The reflectivity factor Z (mm 6/m3) is, by definition,
proportional to the 6th moment of the diameter of
the raindrop:
(#/mm)(mm

6)(mm)/(m3)

Z   N ( D) D dD6
0

where N(D) (mm-1 m-3) denotes the rain drop size

distribution (DSD) in a unit volume (m 3) and D
denotes the diameter of the raindrop (mm).
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 Z~D 6

From Kelsch (1999)

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 Reflectivity factor (cont.)
• Usually, instead of Z, dBZ is used:
dBZ = 10 log10 Z
http://radar.weather.gov/
https://www.wunderground.com/intellicast

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 Rain rate
Rainrate (mm/hr), on the other hand, is given by:
(#/mm)(mm3)(m/s)(mm)/(m3)

R  6 10 
4
N ( D)D 3 vt ( D)dD
0

where vt(D) denotes the terminal velocity (m/s) of

a raindrop of diameter D, often approximated by a
power-law formula proposed by Atlas and Ulbrich
(1977), .. Hence, rainrate is
approximately proportional to the 3.67th moment
of the raindrop size.
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 Z-R relationship

• The subsequent Z-R relationships are

generally approximated by power-law
functions Z=ARb
• The expressions for Z and R indicate that
the DSD plays a key role in radar rainfall
estimation

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 Warm season
convective rainfall

Cool-season
frontal rainfall

R Rainfall from Hurricanes,

tropical depressions

Z 28
 Sources of error in radar rainfall
estimation
• Lack of detection
• Variability of DSD (and hence reflectivity
factor) in the vertical

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 Dropsize
distribution alof

Dropsize distribution
near surface

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 The Doppler effect
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppler_effect

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 Radial Velocity
measured by Doppler radars
• Doppler radars can measure the component of the velocity of
targets toward or away from the radar. This component is called
the "radial velocity".

• For example, at time T1 a pulse is sent towards a target and it

returns a target distance "D".

• At time T2, another pulse is sent towards the same target and
returns a target distance "D+A"

• The distance to target has changed from times T1 to T2

• This results in a phase shift between the two return signals,

which Doppler radars are capable of measuring.

• By knowing the phase shift, the wavelength and the time interval
from T1 to T2, the velocity the target has moved toward or away
from the radar can be computed.

• If the target is moving sideways so that its distance relative to

the radar does not change, the radar will record zero radial
velocity for that target.
From http://moodle.ucs.louisiana.edu/course/view.php?id=1539 32
 Doppler Radar Velocities

From Rodger Brown & Vincent Wood, "A Guide to Interpreting Doppler Velocity Patterns" 33
 Tornado Signatures

From Rodger Brown & Vincent Wood, "A Guide to Interpreting Doppler Velocity Patterns" 34
Doppler Velocity Measurements

From http://moodle.ucs.louisiana.edu/course/view.php?id=1539 35
 Polarimetric radar
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polarization_(
waves)
• http://www.cimms.ou.edu/~schuur/radar.ht
ml
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain

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 37
Rain / snow delineation. 10/24/02 1832 Z
Elevation angle = 0.5°

Elevation angle = 1.5° AP – ground clutter

/AP
BS – biological
scatterers
DS – dry snow
WS – wet snow
SR – stratiform rain
CR – convective
rain
From Ryzhkov 2003 RH – rain / hail
https://emmy7.casa.umass.edu/dfw
End of slides

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