Can stormwater runoff measurements be used for weather radar rainfall adjustment?

Abstract

Predicting the response to rainfall in urban hydrological applications requires accurate precipitation estimates with a high spatiotemporal resolution to reflect the natural variability of rainfall. However, installing rain gauges under nearly ideal measurement conditions is often difficult in urban areas, if not impossible. This paper demonstrates the potential of deriving rainfall measurements in urban areas and bias-adjusting weather radar rainfall measurements using stormwater runoff measurements. As a supplement to point rainfall measurements from rain gauges, the developed bias adjustment approach uses catchment runoff-rainfall estimates derived from water level measurements of a stormwater detention pond. The study shows that the bias-adjusted radar product correlates highly with rain gauge measurements in the catchment. Moreover, the presented approach enables rainfall measurements within a catchment independent of rain gauges located in the catchment, making the technique highly applicable for increasing the density of ground observations and thus improving weather radar precipitation estimates over urban areas. The method also derives the catchment-specific runoff coefficient independently of expensive flow measurements in the catchment, making the method very scalable. This paper highlights the potential of using easily achievable catchment runoff-rainfall measurements to increase the density of available ground observations and thereby improve weather radar precipitation estimates.