BALTEX 1/6-degree daily precipitation climatology 1996-1998

Author(s)
Franz Rubel, Michael Hantel
Abstract

A precipitation correction and analysis (PCA) model has been designed and tested during the preparation phase of the BALTEX main experiment BRIDGE. The PCA model consists of a dynamical bias correction module and a geostatistical module. The bias correction reduces the systematic undercatch of the rain gauges due to wind-induced, evaporation and wetting losses by taking instrument-specific properties plus additional information from synoptic observations into account; the mean correction factor is maximum in February (1.25-1.50) and minimum in August (1.02-1.05). The geostatistical module is an ordinary block kriging algorithm; it yields gridded daily precipitation values plus error estimates on the 1/6-degree resolution of the mesoscale BALTEX models. Here we use 3 years (1996-1998) of 4000 rain gauge observations collected by the BALTEX Meteorological Data Centre for a preliminary high-resolution climatology of the BALTEX catchment. It comprises: Time-series of area-averaged daily precipitation; and area distributions of monthly and annual precipitation. Largely independent is the worldwide monthly GPCP data set which includes also satellite data and is available from 1979 on. GPCP yields, for the years 1996-1998, an average of 2.10mm/day while our evaluation yields 2.01 mm/day. The maximum difference (22%) occurs in January; during the summer months the values are about equal.

Organisation(s)
Department of Meteorology and Geophysics
Journal
Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics
Volume
77
Pages
155-166
No. of pages
12
ISSN
0177-7971
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s007030170024
Publication date
2001
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
1030 Physics, Astronomy
Portal url
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/b84a84d6-15e8-4470-9073-549330b26702