Spring 2005

The latest advancement in precipitation estimation

Why do accurate precipitation estimates matter? From the support of snow removal operations to watershed management, our nation's health, economy, and security depend on the monitoring and prediction of fresh water resources. Unfortunately, seamless and systematic high-resolution monitoring of precipitation input into fresh water resource does not exist across North America. To fill this void, a joint initiative among NSSL, the NWS/Office of Hydrologic Development (OHD) and the NWS Office of Climate, Water, and Weather Services has created a national program and system for the research and development of new hydrometeorological applications and water resource management tools.

A key component of the program is the National Mosaic and Multisensor Quantitative Precipitation Estimation Project (NMQ). The NMQ will function as a community-based research and development platform for the creation of new applications, techniques and strategies toward precipitation estimation (QPE), short-range precipitation forecasting (QPF), precipitation classification (snow, rain, sleet, etc.) and severe weather monitoring and prediction. The NMQ will use a combination of observing systems ranging from radars to satellites on a national scale across small time and space resolutions. Successful results will be implemented into NOAA's Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service and the Flash Flood Monitoring Program.

The NMQ system will be more than a powerful research and application development tool. The NMQ will also be quasi-operational and provide seamless precipitation estimates and short-term precipitation forecasts over the United States. A high premium will be placed on speed and modularity of the NMQ system so that new and advanced algorithms may be plugged in and out with ease and transparency. Rapid real-time communication of base-level WSR-88D data from the CRAFT network will provide the foundation for NMQ along with other data sets such as satellite, surface, and Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) model data. Two high-performance computer clusters comprised of more than 80 individual CPU's will allow NMQ to combine research along with real time QPE product generation. One cluster will serve as a development and testing platform (Joint Applications Development Environment - JADE) that will provide field personnel, university researchers and NOAA scientists a common working environment for application development, intra-comparison, and evaluation. Utilizing the NMQ computing infrastructure and data stream, researchers will be able to develop and assess new QPE and short-term QPF techniques as well as multi-sensor severe weather applications. The second cluster, currently deployed, will serve as a pseudo-operational environment generating and disseminating QPE and basic severe weather products to researchers and end users. Over the next year, the spatial and temporal resolution of the NMQ system and QPE products will evolve from 1x1 km resolution to 250x250 meter resolution, and 21 to 31 vertical levels with updates less than every 5 minutes.

Part of the NMQ project includes the creation of next-generation multiple sensor QPE known as "Q2." Q2 continues NSSL's departure from radar-centric precipitation estimation and moves toward a multi-sensor approach focused on high-resolution integration of radar, satellite, model, and surface observations to produce very high-resolution precipitation estimates.

An initial version of Q2 is currently running to coincide with the first multiple agency Q2 Workshop hosted by NSSL and OHD at the end of June. The workshop will launch the NMQ as a community platform and focus on presenting and discussing operational needs and issues - especially those defined by the NOAA/NWS. The Q2 Workshop participants will ultimately form a plan that will make the most of the unique NMQ environment to improve monitoring and prediction of water-related hazards and freshwater resources in the U.S. More information can be found at: http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/projects/q2/2005wkshp/.