TY - JOUR
T1 - Comparison of two methodologies for long term rainfall monitoring using a commercial microwave communication system
AU - Rayitsfeld, Asaf
AU - Samuels, Rana
AU - Zinevich, Artem
AU - Hadar, Uri
AU - Alpert, Pinhas
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by a grant from the Yeshaya Horowitz Association, Jerusalem . The authors would like to thank our colleagues: O. Goldshtein, N. David and H. Messer for their useful advice and discussion. We are deeply thankful to A. Shilo, E. Moshayov and N. Deval (Pelephone) for their cooperation and help in providing us with the microwave data at no charge and helping with the installations of the rain gauges. Additional support was provided by the GLOWA-Jordan River BMBF and MOS support as well as the EU-CIRCE projects. We also like to thank D. Dreamler and his crew at Israel Electrical Company, for their cooperation and their vital help in the installation of rain gauges. Comments from two anonymous reviewers have greatly improved the manuscript.
PY - 2012/2
Y1 - 2012/2
N2 - Rainfall measurements have been investigated worldwide because of their important implications in meteorology, hydrology, flood warnings and fresh water resource management. Recently a new way of measuring rainfall based on commercial microwave radio links that form cellular communication networks has been proposed, in which the path-integrated rainfall intensity is estimated from the received signal level. This method can reveal fine-scale evolution of rainfall in space and time and allows observation of near-surface rainfall at a spatial resolution of up to 1×1km 2 and a temporal resolution of up to 1min, with no additional installation and maintenance costs. Here we examine two different methodologies for calculating instantaneous rainfall from microwave links. The study region covers a 1600km 2 area in central Israel which includes up to 70 commercial microwave links, and 7 rain gauges installed in the vicinity of the links. 19 rainstorm events over a two year period covering about a 676h overall period, are evaluated. The first methodology uses data from the nearest microwave link while the second uses data interpolated at the point of the rain gauge from multiple nearby links. Results are compared to results from nearby rain gauges. At temporal resolutions of 1min correlations of 0.65 and .77, with biases of -0.08 and -0.06mmh -1 were attained for the first and second methods, respectively. At the temporal resolution of 10min, the correlations of 0.84 and 0.85, with biases of -0.11 and -0.06mmh -1 were attained. On average, application of the interpolation point methodology underestimated accumulated rainfall by only 3% as compared to nearby rain gauges. The single link method overestimated rainfall by 6%. Both methodologies improved (worsened) as the density of the microwave link grid increased (decreased).
AB - Rainfall measurements have been investigated worldwide because of their important implications in meteorology, hydrology, flood warnings and fresh water resource management. Recently a new way of measuring rainfall based on commercial microwave radio links that form cellular communication networks has been proposed, in which the path-integrated rainfall intensity is estimated from the received signal level. This method can reveal fine-scale evolution of rainfall in space and time and allows observation of near-surface rainfall at a spatial resolution of up to 1×1km 2 and a temporal resolution of up to 1min, with no additional installation and maintenance costs. Here we examine two different methodologies for calculating instantaneous rainfall from microwave links. The study region covers a 1600km 2 area in central Israel which includes up to 70 commercial microwave links, and 7 rain gauges installed in the vicinity of the links. 19 rainstorm events over a two year period covering about a 676h overall period, are evaluated. The first methodology uses data from the nearest microwave link while the second uses data interpolated at the point of the rain gauge from multiple nearby links. Results are compared to results from nearby rain gauges. At temporal resolutions of 1min correlations of 0.65 and .77, with biases of -0.08 and -0.06mmh -1 were attained for the first and second methods, respectively. At the temporal resolution of 10min, the correlations of 0.84 and 0.85, with biases of -0.11 and -0.06mmh -1 were attained. On average, application of the interpolation point methodology underestimated accumulated rainfall by only 3% as compared to nearby rain gauges. The single link method overestimated rainfall by 6%. Both methodologies improved (worsened) as the density of the microwave link grid increased (decreased).
KW - Microwave links
KW - Precipitation
KW - Precipitation measurements
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84655174989&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.atmosres.2011.08.011
DO - 10.1016/j.atmosres.2011.08.011
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AN - SCOPUS:84655174989
SN - 0169-8095
VL - 104-105
SP - 119
EP - 127
JO - Atmospheric Research
JF - Atmospheric Research
ER -
