Rainfall measurement in the city

Introduction

Often few or no rainfall information is available in urban areas, whereas this information is important for, e.g., urban water management and urban meteorology. An exception is the Rotterdam region, where many observations are available. This rich data source can help us to improve rainfall estimation in urban areas.

Rainfall is usually measured with rain gauges, disdrometers or weather radars. Rainfall intensities from these instruments are available for the Rotterdam region. The radar rainfall data are obtained from the operational KNMI weather radars, have a spatial resolution of 1 km2, and provide complete coverage over the region.

Rainfall observations near the earth’s surface with a high temporal resolution are often sparse. However, for this thesis unique data sets from an optical scintillometer and commercial microwave links are available. The Meteorology and Air Quality Group of Wageningen University operates the scintillometer (blue line in map below). You will employ optical extinction measurements from this instrument to estimate path-averaged rainfall intensities over the city of Rotterdam. An additional source of data is microwave links from commercial cellular telephone networks (black lines in map below). The electromagnetic signals transmitted from one mobile telecommunication antenna to another are attenuated by rainfall. By measuring the received power at one end of a microwave link as a function of time, the path-integrated attenuation due to rainfall can be calculated.

Activities

Estimate rainfall intensities from optical extinction measurements of a scintillometer. Compare rainfall intensities from this scintillometer with those derived from commercial microwave links and radar data. Study the temporal variations in rainfall intensity using the scintillometer, which may be valuable to improve the rainfall retrieval algorithm for microwave links.

Details

MSc thesis at Hydrology and Quantitative Water Management Group of Wageningen University (WU)

MSc thesis or internship at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI, De Bilt).

Possible supervisors: Aart Overeem (KNMI/WU), Hidde Leijnse (KNMI), Remko Uijlenhoet (WU), Oscar Hartogensis (WU).