Comparison of Rain Gauge Measurements in the Mid-Atlantic Region

Abstract A comparative study of daily and monthly rainfall between research and operational gauges was conducted at the mid-Atlantic region. Fifty research tipping-bucket gauges were deployed to 20 sites where each site had dual or triple gauges. The gauges were in place to validate the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s newly developed polarimetric radar rainfall estimate. For logistic purposes, these research gauges were collocated with operational gauges and were operated over a year at each site. Therefore, this is an experimental study, which involves a mixture of one to five sites of seven operational gauge networks. A very good to excellent agreement between the two collocated research gauges at daily time scale raised the authors’ confidence to consider them as a reference before comparing with the operational gauges. Among operational networks, the National Weather Service’s (NWS) Automated Surface Observing Systems (ASOS) weighing bucket and the Climate Reference Network and Forest ...

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