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An initial assessment of radar data assimilation on warm season rainfall forecasts for use in hydrologic models
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

An initial assessment of radar data assimilation on warm season rainfall forecasts for use in hydrologic models

Ben A Moser, William A Gallus and Ricardo Mantilla
Weather and forecasting, Vol.30(6), pp.1491-1520
2015
DOI: 10.1175/WAF-D-14-00125.1
url
https://doi.org/10.1175/WAF-D-14-00125.1View
Published (Version of record) Open Access

Abstract

AbstractThe effect of introducing radar data assimilation into the WRF Model to improve high-resolution rainfall forecasts that are used for flash flood forecasting is analyzed. The authors selected 12 heavy rainfall events and performed two WRF 24-h simulations that produced quantitative precipitation forecasts (QPFs) for each, one using the standard configuration in forecast mode (QPF-Cold) and one using radar data assimilated at initialization (QPF-Hot). Simulation outputs are compared with NWS stage IV QPEs for storm placement, area over threshold coverage, and equitable threat scores. The two QPF products and stage IV data are used to force the distributed hydrological model CUENCAS for the same 800 km × 800 km domain centered over Iowa (and to calculate peak flows across the river network). The hydrological model responses to the three products are compared in terms of spatial location and flood intensity. In general, QPF-Hot outperformed QPF-Cold in replicating stage IV QPE statistics. However, QPF...

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