1. Rainfall Runoff Prediction Designed and presented by George Limpert in association with CARES and Chris Barnett Mentor: Dr. Neil Fox

2. Project Goals ● The prediction of rainfall runoff has useful applications to agriculture ● Prediction depends on terrain, soil type, and rainfall amounts ● Terrain and soil type information is already available via existing GIS systems ● Provide rainfall amounts in a form that can be read by existing GIS software ● Create a product that can be used to assist in the prediction of runoff

3. Precipitation Estimates ● Precipitation estimates are provided by radar estimates ● Over 100 WSR-88D doppler radar sites throughout the country ● Precipitation estimation algorithm takes into account terrain and reflectivity to produce an accurate estimate ● Several precipitation estimates are distributed as level III data

4. Level III Data ● Four precipitation estimate products – Digital precipitation array – One hour precipitation estimate – Three hour precipitation estimate – Storm total precipitation estimate ● Tradeoff between various products

5. One Hour Precipitation Estimate ● Radial data ● Resolution of 1 degree x 2 kilometers ● 16 levels ● Good resolution but poor precision ● Provides a range for possible precipitation total

6. Digital Precipitation Array ● Provides precipitation totals for the past hour ● 256 levels ● Approximately 4 km resolution ● Gridded data ● Good precision but mediocre resolution ● Provides an actual estimate for total precipitation

7. Level III Data ● Freely available from NWS ftp server ● Available only in a poorly documented format ● Few third party tools for decoding level III data ● NWS ftp server has limited resources and provides slow downloads

8. Requirements ● Cover the entire state of Missouri if possible ● Nine radar sites needed – Saint Louis – Pleasant Hill – Springfield – Paducah – Memphis – Tulsa – Omaha – Quad Cities – Des Moines

9. Requirements ● Produce an accurate decoding of the data ● Convert the data into a format which is readable by GIS systems ● Provide the data at reasonable intervals ● System should run automatically if possible ● Some faults should be tolerated, particularly radar downtime and network outages

10. System Structure ● Three modules organized in a linear fashion – First module downloads appropriate data for radar sites from NWS ftp servers – Second module decodes the data and converts it to a format which can be read by GIS systems – Third module uploads data to a computer with GIS software installed

11. System Structure ● Second module is the most complex and can be further broken down ● Organized into input modules, a core, and output modules ● Input modules responsible for reading in level III data ● Core selects an appropriate input and output module ● Output module produces readable data in a different format

12. Development Tools ● Cygwin provides a UNIX-like environment on a computer running Windows ● Compiler of choice is gcc ● Output graphics produced by libpng ● Output to shapefiles produced by shapelib

13. Demonstration ● March 22, 2005 ● One hour precipitation total ● Tallahassee, FL

14. Demonstration ● March 22, 2005 ● One hour precipitation total ● Tallahassee, FL

15. Demonstration ● March 22, 2005 ● One hour precipitation total ● Tallahassee, FL

16. Demonstration ● March 22, 2005 ● One hour precipitation total ● Tallahassee, FL

17. Demonstration ● March 22, 2005 ● One hour precipitation total ● Tallahassee, FL

18. Demonstration ● March 22, 2005 ● One hour precipitation total ● Tallahassee, FL

19. Demonstration ● March 22, 2005 ● One hour precipitation total ● Tallahassee, FL

20. Demonstration ● March 22, 2005 ● One hour precipitation total ● Tallahassee, FL

21. Demonstration ● March 22, 2005 ● One hour precipitation total ● Tallahassee, FL

22. Demonstration ● March 22, 2005 ● One hour precipitation total ● Tallahassee, FL

23. Demonstration ● March 22, 2005 ● One hour precipitation total ● Tallahassee, FL

24. Demonstration ● March 22, 2005 ● One hour precipitation total ● Tallahassee, FL

25. Demonstration ● March 22, 2005 ● One hour precipitation total ● Tallahassee, FL

26. Demonstration ● March 8, 2005 ● Near Montgomery, AL ● One hour precipitation total

27. Verification ● March 8, 2005 ● Near Montgomery, AL ● One hour precipitation total ● Image generated by the NWS

28. Demonstration ● March 9, 2005 ● Melbourne, FL ● Base reflectivity

29. Verification ● March 9, 2005 ● Melbourne, FL ● Base reflectivity ● Image generated by the NWS

30. Licensing ● Support free and open exchange of data and ideas ● Private weather industry wants to restrict the ability of NOAA to disseminate data to the public ● Open source software, by definition, cannot place licensing restrictions to prevent commercial use ● Therefore, this product will not be released as open source software

31. Development Status ● Core functionality of decoding level III data is completed and has been tested ● Converting data to GIS readable format has not been tested ● Automatic downloading, conversion, and uploading of data has not been tested ● Data from this project has not yet been integrated into the CARES website

32. Future Development ● Radar coverage may be improved if NWS places a WSR-88D in Mid-Missouri or north central Missouri ● Make use of actual observed rainfall totals to calibrate precipitation estimates ● Generate precipitation estimates from raw level II data ● Make use of less advanced radar to improve estimates in areas with poor radar coverage