NSSL hydrometeorology research
helps NOAA serve society's needs for weather and water information
by developing methods to integrate and use full suites of modern weather
observations, sensors, and model output for severe storm monitoring
and prediction.
Hydrometeorology at NSSL—Precipitation Monitoring, Estimation and
Forecasts
Accurate quantitative precipitation estimates (QPE) and very short-term
quantitative precipitation forecasts (VSQPF) are critical to fresh water
management in the United States and around the world. National Weather
Service (NWS) forecasters have documented their need for better operational
products. River Forecast Centers need more accurate QPE/VSQPF and better
knowledge of QPE uncertainties and their impacts on river forecasts. Weather
Forecast Offices require the same for improved flash flood warnings. NSSL
addresses these issues by using their expertise to research and build
on current operational tools.
Precipitation Estimation
- The next generation QPE (Q2)
continues NSSL's departure from radar-centric precipitation estimation
and moves toward a multi-sensor approach focused on high-resolution
integration of radar, satellite, model, and surface observations to
produce very high-resolution precipitation estimates.
Flash Flood Warnings
- The Coastal and Inland Flooding Observation and Warning (CI-FLOW)
demonstration
program will facilitate the evaluation and testing of new technologies
and techniques to produce accurate and timely identification of coastal,
estuary and inland floods, flash floods and their impacts on the coastal
ecosystem.
- Beginning in 2004, the
NSSL’s
Hydrometeorology Research Group, in collaboration with the Institute
of Heavy Rain of the China Meteorological Administration, established
a scientific exchange program focusing on radar applications in quantitative
precipitation estimation and forecast (QPE/F) towards improving the
accuracy of flood and flash flood warnings. The program includes the
exchange of visiting scientists, joint scientific workshops, and academic
lectures.
Through
this exchange, scientists from both the USA and China have gained a
better understanding of ongoing efforts in the two countries to address
the scientific and operational challenges of flood warnings and water
resource management.
The collaboration also facilitated scientific
contributions in the development and refinement of the National Mosaic
and QPE system.
- NSSL and NOAA's Forecast Systems Laboratory
(now ESRL) collaborated with the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) and Water
Resources Agency (WRA) of Taiwan to develop a High-Resolution QPE and
QPF (HRQ2) system for Taiwan. The
two agencies were working to improve Taiwan's capabilities to issue
flash flood and flood warnings and improve river and reservoir water
management.
The
HRQ2 system includes 5 components: 1) Radar data quality control;
2) 3-D radar mosaic; 3) Severe weather products; 3) QPE; 4) QPF;
and 5) Product visualization and evaluation. The QPF component is
a joint effort between the NSSL and the ERSL where an extrapolation
scheme developed by the NSSL produces QPF in the time frame of 0-3hr
and a hot-start NWP model developed by the ERSL provides QPF out
to 24hr. The first 4-year plan (2002-2005) has been successfully
completed and the HRQ2 system has been running in real-time at the CWB
as well as more then ten other government agencies in support of their
severe weather and floods/flash floods warnings, water resource management,
soil conservations and other weather related decisions.
In 2006, NSSL
and ERSL have started a new 4-year plan with the CWB and WRA of Taiwan
to continue the development and enhancements of the HRQ2 system.
Debris Flow (Mudslide) Warnings
- California is particularly susceptible to
mudslides and debris flow caused by extreme rainfall. Two NSSL researchers were invited
by the NWS to serve on an interagency team to create a debris flow,
or mudslide warning system for southern California. The interagency
team will provide guidelines for the warning system including developing
a research plan for improved QPE over the southern California mountains.
Basin Delineation
- NSSL is developing, enhancing, and maintaining
a flash-flood-scale basin dataset in support of the National Weather
Service Flash Flood Monitoring and Prediction System (FFMP), and
provides technical assistance for dataset custmization efforts at
local Weather Forecast Offices.
Testbeds
- The National Mosaic and Multi-sensor QPE
(NMQ) system and associated infrastructure was developed at NSSL
to serve as a national test bed for QPE and VSTQPF research and development
and research-to-operations science infusion. NMQ provides a real-time,
around-the-clock, applications development and testing environment
that includes automatic algorithm comparison and verification scoring.
- The Hydrometeorology Testbed (HMT)
is a concept aimed at accelerating the infusion of new technologies,
models, and scientific results from the research community into daily
forecasting operations of the NWS and its River Forecast Centers. HMT
operates as a demonstration with forecasters and researchers joining
forces in an operational setting.
The most recent HMT ran from December 1, 2005 through
March 1, 2006 and involved the NOAA NWS, NOAA ESRL/PSD, NOAA ESRL/GSD,
AND NSSL. NSSL
provided on of its SMART-Radars to supplement the coverage of the
X-Band polarimetric radar, provided by ESRL/PSD. Their goal was
to see how the quantitative precipitation estimation (QPE coverage
provided by the National WSR-88D network could improve. Data
from both radars will be input into NSSL's national radar mosaic system
(NMQ) in order to compute QPE over the basin. Detailed inter-comparison
with rain gauges in the basin will provide a metric for evaluating
improvements to QPE.
Proof-of-concept results will enhance NOAA's current
observing and modeling capabilities and improve predictions of location,
timing, and amounts of rainfall.
