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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Amy Green, Professor Chris Kilsby, Professor Andras BardossyORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© 2024 The Author(s). High-resolution rainfall fields are a crucial tool for many hydrological and hydrodynamic applications, including flood forecasting and urban drainage design. The aim of this study is to explore and exploit the space–time properties of rainfall using Fast-Fourier transforms, to provide a new method for the generation of high-resolution synthetic rainfall grids. These fields have realistic spatio-temporal properties, parametrised using historical radar rainfall events, matching the resolution of weather radar data (1km, 5 min), for events with a duration of 0.5–6 h. Utilising spectral random field theory, simulated rainfall fields are generated with a prescribed correlation structure, anisotropy, advection and marginal rainfall rate proportions and distributions. A model for rainfall generation is demonstrated, with an enriched model parameter sampling architecture using meaningful event clustering, based on space–time event properties. This model framework performs well at recreating short-duration spatio-temporal rainfall events, both visually and statistically. The extension of a clustered rainfall model allows for larger-scale sampling of synthetic event parameters, with specific rainfall event types. There are numerous potential uses for this rainfall model, such as design storms or test cases for applications of radar rainfall estimates. These include but are not limited to nowcasting, numerical weather prediction, flash flood forecasting and machine learning model training data generation.
Author(s): Green AC, Kilsby C, Bardossy A
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Journal of Hydrology
Year: 2024
Volume: 630
Print publication date: 01/02/2024
Online publication date: 26/01/2024
Acceptance date: 26/11/2023
Date deposited: 19/02/2024
ISSN (print): 0022-1694
Publisher: Elsevier BV
URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2024.130630
DOI: 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2024.130630
Data Access Statement: Code for generating simulated events is available on GitHub (https://github.com/amyycb/simradrain). Weather radar data used for event parameterisation is from the Met Office NIMROD system, openly available on the Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA) archive.
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