Probabilistic radar rainfall nowcasts using empirical and theoretical uncertainty models

Abstract

Weather radar has a potential to provide accurate short-term (0–3 h) forecasts of rainfall (i.e. radar nowcasts), which are of great importance in warnings and risk management for hydro-meteorological events. However, radar nowcasts are affected by large uncertainties, which are not only linked to limitations in the forecast method but also because of errors in the radar rainfall measurement. The probabilistic quantitative precipitation nowcasting approach attempts to quantify these uncertainties by delivering the forecasts in a probabilistic form. This study implements two forms of probabilistic quantitative precipitation nowcasting for a hilly area in the south of Manchester, namely, the theoretically based scheme [ensemble rainfall forecasts (ERF)-TN] and the empirically based scheme (ERF-EM), and explores which one exhibits higher predictive skill. The ERF-TN scheme generates ensemble forecasts of rainfall in which each ensemble member is determined by the stochastic realisation of a theoretical noise component. The so-called ERF-EM scheme proposed and applied for the first time in this study, aims to use an empirically based error model to measure and quantify the combined effect of all the error sources in the radar rainfall forecasts. The essence of the error model is formulated into an empirical relation between the radar rainfall forecasts and the corresponding ‘ground truth’ represented by the rainfall field from rain gauges measurements. The ensemble members generated by the two schemes have been compared with the rain gauge rainfall. The hit rate and the false alarm rate statistics have been computed and combined into relative operating characteristic curves. The comparison of the performance scores for the two schemes shows that the ERF-EM achieves better performance than the ERF-TN at 1-h lead time. The predictive skills of both schemes are almost identical when the lead time increases to 2 h. In addition, the relation between uncertainty in the radar rainfall forecasts and lead time is also investigated by computing the dispersion of the generated ensemble members. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.