Adjusted Daily Rainfall and Snowfall Data for Canada

ABSTRACT This article documents how Environment and Climate Change Canada’s Adjusted Daily Rainfall and Snowfall (AdjDlyRS) dataset was developed. The adjustments include (i) conversion of ruler measurements of snowfall to its water equivalent using a previously developed snow water equivalent (SWE) ratio map for Canada; (ii) corrections for gauge-related issues including undercatch and evaporation caused by wind effects and gauge-specific wetting loss, as well as for trace precipitation amounts, using previously developed procedures for Canada. Various data flags (e.g., accumulation flags) were also treated. This dataset contains all Canadian stations reporting daily rainfall and snowfall for which we have metadata to implement the adjustments. The length of the data record varies from one station to another, starting as early as 1840. The results show that the original unadjusted total precipitation data in Environment and Climate Change Canada’s digital archive underestimate the total precipitation in northeastern Canada by more than 25% and by about 10–15% in most of southern Canada. Such large underestimates make the original data unsuitable for water availability and/or balance studies or for numerical model validation, among many other applications. The use of the assumed 10:1 SWE ratio for the archived total precipitation data is the primary cause of the underestimate, which is most severe in northeastern Canada. The trace correction adds 5–20% to precipitation values in northern Canada but less than 5% in southern Canada. The gauge-related corrections do not show an organized spatial pattern but add 5–10% to the precipitation at 312 stations. Long runs (≥3 months) of miscoded missing values were also identified and corrected. The latest version of the AdjDlyRS dataset is available from the Canadian Open Data Portal; currently it is version 2016, which contains 3346 stations and covers the period from station inception to February 2016. This dataset is suitable for producing gridded precipitation datasets, as well as other applications.

[1]  Éva Mekis,et al.  Rehabilitation and Analysis of Canadian Daily Precipitation Time Series , 1999, Data, Models and Analysis.

[2]  Éva Mekis,et al.  An Overview of the Second Generation Adjusted Daily Precipitation Dataset for Trend Analysis in Canada , 2011, Data, Models and Analysis.

[3]  Franz Rubel,et al.  Bias correction of global daily rain gauge measurements , 2001 .

[4]  Douglas L. Kane,et al.  Bias corrections of long‐term (1973–2004) daily precipitation data over the northern regions , 2005 .

[5]  J. Susskind,et al.  Global Precipitation at One-Degree Daily Resolution from Multisatellite Observations , 2001 .

[6]  M. Hutchinson,et al.  Development and Testing of Canada-Wide Interpolated Spatial Models of Daily Minimum–Maximum Temperature and Precipitation for 1961–2003 , 2008 .

[7]  Éva Mekis,et al.  Derivation of an adjustment factor map for the estimation of the water equivalent of snowfall from ruler measurements in Canada , 2010 .

[8]  E. L. Peck,et al.  Accuracy of precipitation measurements for hydrologic modeling , 1974 .

[9]  B. Sevruk,et al.  The wind-induced loss of thunderstorm precipitation measurements , 2005 .

[10]  Xuebin Zhang,et al.  Temperature and precipitation trends in Canada during the 20th century , 2000, Data, Models and Analysis.

[11]  J. Metcalfe,et al.  Rainfall Measurement in Canada: Changing Observational Methodsand Archive Adjustment Procedures , 1997 .

[12]  Éva Mekis,et al.  Field accuracy of Canadian rain measurements , 2008 .

[13]  Xiaolan L. Wang,et al.  An algorithm for blending multiple satellite precipitation estimates with in situ precipitation measurements in Canada , 2011 .

[14]  Éva Mekis Adjustments for trace measurements in Canada , 2005 .

[15]  P. Sen Estimates of the Regression Coefficient Based on Kendall's Tau , 1968 .

[16]  D. Legates,et al.  Mean seasonal and spatial variability in gauge‐corrected, global precipitation , 1990 .

[17]  Yuehua Wu,et al.  New Techniques for the Detection and Adjustment of Shifts in Daily Precipitation Data Series , 2010 .

[18]  Xiaolan L. Wang,et al.  Changes of Extreme Wave Heights in Northern Hemisphere Oceans and Related Atmospheric Circulation Regimes , 2001 .

[19]  V. Fortin,et al.  Performance Evaluation of the Canadian Precipitation Analysis (CaPA) , 2015 .