ACCUMULATED PRECIPITATION DISTRIBUTION BASED ON COMBINED SATELLITE INFORMATION AND GROUND M.pdf

ACCUMULATED PRECIPITATION DISTRIBUTION BASED ON COMBINED SATELLITE INFORMATION AND GROUND MEASUREMENTS Piotr Struzik Institute of Meteorology and Water Management P. Borowego Str. 14, 30-215 Krakow, POLAND ABSTRACT The detailed space distribution of accumulated precipitation is highly required as input for both hydrological and agro-meteorological models. Relatively precision but sparse ground measurement network is frequently not adequate even using interpolation methods. The rainfall estimations based only on IR or IR/VIS satellite data give more detailed structure of rainfall distribution but absolute error is large sometimes. To solve this problem, the method for merged satellite and conventional information use, was developed. Polish network of synoptic stations, climate posts and raingauges with addition of rainfall estimation based on METEOSAT satellite data were used. The 24 hours accumulated rainfall product was tested. First tests based on 2001- 2002 cases showed interesting results, especially for convective precipitation. Description of the method and discussion on obtained results are presented in the paper. 1. INTRODUCTION Most important information for hydrology is amount of precipiatation accumulated in certain period of time. Frequently used product is 24 hours accumulated precipitation. Standard measurement performed on the ground have limited number of points represented by synoptic, climatic and raingauge posts. Due to communication problems frequently only synoptic or synoptic + climatic posts deliver measurements in real time. Modelling distribution of rainfall amount with this information is frequently misleading. Distances between stations are large (sometime more then 100 km). Outside of country, precipitation information is limited (neighbour countries) or completely not available (sea). As a result amount of precipitation is not correctly spatially modelled specially in storm cases. On the area of Poland, actually 57 Synop stations and 154