Precipitation: Advances in Measurement, Estimation and Prediction

✍ Scribed by Michael Schönhuber, Günter Lammer, Walter L. Randeu (auth.), Silas Michaelides (eds.)

• Publisher: Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
• Year: 2008
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 552
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Water cycling and the future availability of fresh water resources are immense societal concerns that impact all nations on Earth as it affects virtually every environmental issue. Precipitation is also a fundamental component of the weather/climate system for it regulates the global energy and radiation balance through coupling to clouds, water vapor, global winds and atmospheric transport. Accurate and comprehensive information on precipitation is essential for understanding the global water/energy cycle and for a wide range of research and applications with practical benefits to society. However, rainfall is difficult to measure because precipitation systems tend to be random in character and also evolve and dissipate very rapidly. It is not uncommon to see a wide range of rain amounts over a small area; and in any given area, the amount of rain can vary significantly over a short time span. These factors together make precipitation difficult to quantify, yet measurements at such local scales are needed for many hydrometeorological applications such as flood and landslide forecasting. Historical, multi-decadal measurements of precipitation from surface-based rain gauges are available over continents, but oceans remained largely unobserved prior to the beginning of the satellite era. Early visible and infrared satellites provided information on cloud tops and their horizontal extent; however, wide-band microwave frequencies proved extremely useful for probing into the precipitating liquid and ice layers of clouds.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages I-XXX
Front Matter....Pages 1-1
The 2D-Video-Distrometer....Pages 3-31
Using vibrating-wire technology for precipitation measurements....Pages 33-58
Measurements of light rain, drizzle and heavy fog....Pages 59-82
The Droplet Spectrometer – a measuring concept for detailed precipitation characterization....Pages 83-99
Quality control of precipitation data....Pages 101-126
Front Matter....Pages 127-129
Global precipitation measurement....Pages 131-169
Operational discrimination of raining from non-raining clouds in mid-latitudes using multispectral satellite data....Pages 171-194
Estimation of precipitation from space-based platforms....Pages 195-217
Combined radar–radiometer retrievals from satellite observations....Pages 219-230
Front Matter....Pages 231-231
Rain microstructure from polarimetric radar and advanced disdrometers....Pages 233-284
On the use of spectral polarimetry to observe ice cloud microphysics with radar....Pages 285-312
Performance of algorithms for rainfall retrieval from dual-polarization X-band radar measurements....Pages 313-340
Front Matter....Pages 341-341
Underwater acoustic measurements of rainfall....Pages 343-363
Front Matter....Pages 365-365
Probabilistic evaluation of ensemble precipitation forecasts....Pages 367-388
Improved nowcasting of precipitation based on convective analysis fields....Pages 389-417
Overview of methods for the verification of quantitative precipitation forecasts....Pages 419-452
Objective verification of spatial precipitation forecasts....Pages 453-472
Front Matter....Pages 473-473
Combined use of weather radar and limited area model for wintertime precipitation type discrimination....Pages 475-491
Adjusting ground radar using space TRMM Precipitation Radar....Pages 493-514
Implementing a multiplatform precipitation experiment....Pages 515-531
Back Matter....Pages 533-540

✦ Subjects

Meteorology/Climatology; Ecotoxicology; Remote Sensing/Photogrammetry; Environmental Monitoring/Analysis