A51K-0228
Evaluation of Ground Radar Snowfall Products Using SNOTEL Measurements over Mountainous Regions in Western United States
Friday, 18 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Yixin Wen1, Pierre Kirstetter2, Jonathan J Gourley3, Yang Hong1 and Ali Behrangi4, (1)University of Oklahoma Norman Campus, Norman, OK, United States, (2)University of Oklahoma Norman Campus, CIMMS, Norman, OK, United States, (3)National Severe Storms Lab, Oklahoma City, OK, United States, (4)NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, United States
Abstract:
Snow contributes to regional and global water budgets and is of critical importance to our society. Snow can also cause potentially hazardous weather, and rapidly-melting snowpack may cause flooding. For large-scale weather monitoring, snowfall observations from ground radar have become highly desirable. However, verification and refinement of these retrievals requires ground-validation datasets. This study conducts a comprehensive evaluation of NOAA/NSSL Multi-Radar/ Multi-Sensor (MRMS) snowfall products using the Snow Telemetry (SNOTEL) hourly and daily precipitation and Snow Water Equivalent (SWE) datasets. The statistical analysis reveals that the MRMS snowfall estimation has bias compared to SNOTEL in-situ measurements. The bias between MRMS and SNOTEL is studied by considering environmental variables, radar beam sampling characteristics (blockage, beam height and width) and snow density. We expect a step forward towards establishing a robust surface-based snowfall reference database in West Mountainous Region, which can be shared with the satellite snowfall and snowpack community.
