Journal article
Estimating the frequency of extreme rainfall using weather radar and stochastic storm transposition
Journal of hydrology (Amsterdam), Vol.488, pp.150-165
04/30/2013
DOI: 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2013.03.003
Abstract
•Conventional rainfall frequency analysis relies on several simplifying assumptions.•We couple stochastic storm transposition with radar rainfall for frequency analysis.•SST with radar rainfall allows us to examine the structure of extreme rainfall.•Extreme rainfall has high spatio-temporal variability that may impact flood risk.•New methods allow flood risk estimation that considers extreme rainfall variability.
Spatial and temporal variability in extreme rainfall, and its interactions with land cover and the drainage network, is an important driver of flood response. “Design storms,” which are commonly used for flood risk assessment, however, are assumed to be uniform in space and either uniform or highly idealized in time. The impacts of these and other commonly-made assumptions are rarely considered, and their impacts on flood risk estimates are poorly understood. This study presents an alternate framework for rainfall frequency analysis that couples stochastic storm transposition (SST) with “storm catalogs” developed from a ten-year high-resolution (15-min, 1-km2) radar rainfall dataset for the region surrounding Charlotte, North Carolina, USA. The SST procedure involves spatial and temporal resampling from these storm catalogs to reconstruct the regional climatology of extreme rainfall. SST-based intensity–duration–frequency (IDF) estimates are driven by the spatial and temporal rainfall variability from weather radar observations, are tailored specifically to the chosen watershed, and do not require simplifying assumptions of storm structure. We are able to use the SST procedure to reproduce IDF estimates from conventional methods for four urban watersheds in Charlotte. We demonstrate that extreme rainfall can vary substantially in time and in space, with potentially important flood risk implications that cannot be assessed using conventional techniques. SST coupled with high-resolution radar rainfall fields represents a useful alternative to conventional design storms for flood risk assessment, the full advantages of which can be realized when the concept is extended to flood frequency analysis using a distributed hydrologic model.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Estimating the frequency of extreme rainfall using weather radar and stochastic storm transposition
- Creators
- Daniel B Wright - Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USAJames A Smith - Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USAGabriele Villarini - Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Iowa, IA, USAMary Lynn Baeck - Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Journal of hydrology (Amsterdam), Vol.488, pp.150-165
- Publisher
- Elsevier B.V
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2013.03.003
- ISSN
- 0022-1694
- eISSN
- 1879-2707
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 04/30/2013
- Academic Unit
- Civil and Environmental Engineering
- Record Identifier
- 9983992070502771
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