NOAA wants to improve responses to flooding events
through the work of CI-FLOW, the Coastal and Inland FLooding Observation and
Warning Project, focused on the Tar-Pamlico River Basin in North Carolina.
CI-FLOW is a research and demonstration program for the evaluation and testing
of new technologies and techniques to produce accurate and timely identification
of inland and coastal floods and flash floods. Partners in the project include
NSSL, North Carolina State University (NCSU), North Carolina Sea Grant Extension
and the National Weather Service.
NSSL's technical and scientific capabilities
will be leveraged in CI-FLOW towards enhancing models that will improve responses
to flooding events. NSSL's NMQ/Q2 system will be tested as part of the project.
The NMQ/Q2 is a prototype real-time computing system that generates three-dimensional
mosaics of radar reflectivity and a suite of derived products including multiple
rainfall products. The system has also been designed to ingest all relevant
grids for rainfall estimation such as multiple radar, rain gauges, satellite
imagery, model output, and lightning flashes. The reflectivity mosaics and
derived products are interpolated to a 1-km CONUS grid mesh on 31 vertical
layers and are updated every 5 minutes.
Within NOAA, there are currently two
other primary research activities focused on the production of near-real-time
high resolution multi-sensor QPE. The Office of Hydrologic Development's Multisensor
Precipitation Estimator (MPE) and NESDIS's Hydro-Estimator (HE). CI-FLOW will
develop and identify the optimum set of techniques and algorithms from all
three research activities to serve as a state-of-thescience NOAA multi-sensor
QPE.
International collaborations:
HMRG-IHR (China) scientific exchange program
Beginning in 2004, NSSL's HydroMet Research Group in collaboration with the
Institute of Heavy Rain of the China Meteorological Administration established
a scientific exchange program focusing on radar applications in quantitative
precipitation estimation and forecast (QPE/F) towards improving the accuracy
of flood and flash flood warnings. The ongoing program includes the exchange
of visiting scientists, joint scientific workshops, and academic lectures.
Through this exchange, scientists from both the USA and China gain a better
understanding of continuing efforts in the two countries to address the scientific
and operational challenges of flood warnings and water resource management.
The collaboration also facilitates scientific contributions in the development
and refinement of the National Mosaic and QPE system.
NSSL-Central Weather
Bureau (Taiwan) High-Resolution QPE and QPF (HRQ2) system
NOAA's NSSL and Earth
System Research Laboratory (ESRL) collaborated with the Central Weather Bureau
(CWB) and Water Resources Agency (WRA) of Taiwan to develop a High-Resolution
QPE and QPF (HRQ2) system for Taiwan. The four-year collaboration began in
2002 to help improve Taiwan's capabilities to issue flash flood and flood warnings
and to improve river and reservoir water management. The HRQ2 system has been
running in real-time at the CWB and at more than ten other government agencies
in support of their severe weather and flood/flash flood warnings, water resource
management, soil conservation and other weather-related decisions. In 2006,
NSSL and ESRL started a new 4-year plan with the CWB and WRA of Taiwan to continue
the development and enhancements of the HRQ2 system.
