Performance evaluation of high-resolution rainfall estimation by X-band dual-polarization radar for flash flood applications in mountainous basins

Summary Different relations between surface rainfall rate, R, and high-resolution polarimetric X-band radar observations were evaluated using a dense network of rain gauge measurements over complex terrain in Central Italian Alps. The specific differential phase shift, KDP, rainfall algorithm (RKDP) although associated with low systematic error it exhibits low sensitivity to the spatial variability of rainfall as compared to the standard algorithm (RSTD) that is based on the reflectivity-to-rainfall (Z–R) relationship. On the other hand, the dependence of the reflectivity measurement on the absolute radar calibration and the rain-path radar signal attenuation introduces significant systematic error on the RSTD rainfall estimates. The study shows that adjusting the Z–R relationship for mean-field bias determined using the RKDP estimates as reference is the best technique for acquiring unbiased radar-rainfall estimates at fine space–time scales. Overall, the bias of the RKDP-adjusted Z–R estimator is shown to be lower than 10% for both storm cases, while the relative root-mean-square error is shown to range from 0.6 (convective storm) to 0.9 (stratiform storm). A vertical rainfall profile correction (VPR) technique is tested in this study for the stratiform storm case. The method is based on a newly developed VPR algorithm that uses the X-band polarimetric information to identify the properties of the melting layer and devices a precipitation profile that varies for each radar volume scan to correct the radar-rainfall estimates. Overall, when accounting for the VPR effect there is up to 70% reduction in the systematic error of the 3° elevation estimates, while the reduction in terms of relative root-mean-square error is limited to within 10%.