Search results for "Rain gauge"
showing 10 items of 73 documents
The impact of climate change on extreme precipitation in Sicily, Italy
2018
Increasing precipitation extremes are one of the possible consequences of a warmer climate. These may exceed the capacity of urban drainage systems, and thus impact the urban environment. Because short-duration precipitation events are primarily responsible for flooding in urban systems, it is important to assess the response of extreme precipitation at hourly (or sub-hourly) scales to a warming climate. This study aims to evaluate the projected changes in extreme rainfall events across the region of Sicily (Italy) and, for two urban areas, to assess possible changes in Depth-Duration-Frequency (DDF) curves. We used Regional Climate Model outputs from Coordinated Regional Climate Downscalin…
A space-time rainfall generator for highly convective Mediterranean rainstorms
2003
Distributed hydrological models require fine resolution rainfall inputs, enhancing the practical interest of space-time rainfall models, capable of generating through numerical simulation realistic space-time rainfall intensity fields. Among different mathematical approaches, those based on point processes and built upon a convenient analytical description of the raincell as the fundamental unit, have shown to be particularly suitable and well adapted when extreme rainfall events of convective nature are considered. Starting from previous formulations, some analytical refinements have been considered, allowing practical generation of space-time rainfall intensity fields for that type of rai…
Soil moisture modelling of a SMOS pixel: interest of using the PERSIANN database over the Valencia Anchor Station
2010
In the framework of Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) Calibration/Validation (Cal/Val) activities, this study addresses the use of the PERSIANN-CCS<sup>1</sup>database in hydrological applications to accurately simulate a whole SMOS pixel by representing the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of the soil moisture fields over a wide area (50×50 km<sup>2</sup>). The study focuses on the Valencia Anchor Station (VAS) experimental site, in Spain, which is one of the main SMOS Cal/Val sites in Europe. <br><br> A faithful representation of the soil moisture distribution at SMOS pixel scale (50×50 km<sup>2</sup>) requires an accurate estimation…
In vivo vibrational wave propagation in human tibiae at different ages
1989
Vibrational wave propagation was tested in vivo on the tibial bone of both legs of 56 female volunteers. The impact was produced by a hammer with a force strain gauge and the response was monitored by two accelerometers. The peak amplitude of the accelerations, the velocity of the acceleration wave propagation and damping were analysed for comparison among the different age groups. The results showed significant negative correlations between age and the peak amplitude of acceleration, and the velocity of acceleration wave propagation (p less than 0.01). The damping time of the acceleration wave also had a negative correlation with age. These findings suggested that age differences were rela…
Flexible multibody simulation approach in the analysis of tibial strain during walking.
2007
Strains within the bone tissue play a major role in bone (re)modeling. These small strains can be assessed using experimental strain gage measurements, which are challenging and invasive. Further, the strain measurements are, in practise, limited to certain regions of superficial bones only, such as the anterior surface of the tibia. In this study, tibial strains occurring during walking were estimated using a numerical approach based on flexible multibody dynamics. In the introduced approach, a lower body musculoskeletal model was developed by employing motion capture data obtained from walking at a constant velocity. The motion capture data were used in inverse dynamics simulation to teac…
An original way to evaluate daily rainfall variability simulated by a regional climate model: the case of South African austral summer rainfall
2014
We discuss the value of a clustering approach as a tool for evaluating daily rainfall output from climate models. Ascendant hierarchical clustering is used to evaluate how well South African recurrent daily rainfall patterns are simulated during the austral summer (December to February 1970–1971 to 1998–1999). A set of 35-km regional climate simulations, run with the WRF model and driven by the ERA40 reanalysis, is chosen as a case study. Six recurrent patterns are identified and compared to the observed clusters obtained by applying the same methodology to 5352 daily rain gauge records. Two of the WRF clusters describe either a persistent and widespread dryness (65% of the days) or pattern…
Performances of GPM satellite precipitation over the two major Mediterranean islands
2018
Reliable and accurate precipitation measurement or estimation is crucial for disaster monitoring and water resource management. However, obtaining accurate high-resolution precipitation fields is still a challenging task for scientists and practitioners, especially in the poorer region of the world. Nowadays the scientific community expects significant improvements in precipitation monitoring by the continuous technological evolution of satellite-rainfall estimate systems which are able to produce data with global coverage and thus can provide low-cost information even in scarcely populated areas or places where for economic reasons ground measures are missing. The most recent satellite mis…
Estimation of sub-hourly DDF curves using scaling properties of hourly and sub-hourly data at partially gauged site
2005
Abstract In urban drainage systems, knowledge of short-duration rainfall events can be considered as one of the most critical elements when their hydrological behaviour wants to be investigated. The temporal resolution of rainfall data usually available for practical applications is often lower than the data requested for the design procedures or mathematical models application, greatly affecting their reliability. Moreover, when high resolution rain gauges are available in the catchment, the registration period cannot be sufficiently long for obtaining practically usable statistical analyses. The present study proposes a method for estimating the distribution of sub-hourly extreme rainfall…
Seasonal precipitation interpolation at the Valencia region with multivariate methods using geographic and topographic information
2009
The spatial pattern of precipitation is a complex variable that strongly depends on other geographic and topographic factors. As precipitation is usually known only at certain locations, interpolation procedures are needed in order to predict this variable in other regions. The use of multivariate interpolation methods is usually preferred, as secondary variables—generally derived using GIS tools—correlated with precipitation can be included. In this paper, a comparative study on different univariate and multivariate interpolation methodologies is presented. Our study area is centred in the region of Valencia, located to the eastern Spanish Mediterranean coast. The followed methodology can …
Modification of the southern African rainfall variability/ENSO relationship since the late 1960s
2000
Analysis of 149 raingauge series (1946–1988) shows a weak positive correlation between late summer rainfalls (January–March) in tropical southern Africa and the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI). The correlation coefficients have been unstable since World War II. They were close to zero before 1970 and significant thereafter. Before 1970, southern African late summer rainfalls were more specifically correlated with regional patterns of sea surface temperature (SST), mainly over the southwestern Indian Ocean. After 1970, teleconnections with near global SST anomaly patterns, i.e. over the central Pacific and Indian oceans, dominate the regional connections. The increase in the sensitivity of …