Preprint Article Version 1 Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed

Multifractal Comparison of Reflectivity and Polarimetric Rainfall Data from C- and X-Band Radars and Respective Hydrological Responses of a Complex Catchment Model

Igor Paz
* ORCID logo ,
Bernard Willinger
,
Auguste Gires
,
Laurent Monier
,
Christophe Zobrist
,
Bruno Tisserand
,
Ioulia Tchiguirinskaia
,
Daniel Schertzer
Version 1 : Received: 13 October 2017 / Approved: 14 October 2017 / Online: 14 October 2017 (03:10:07 CEST)

How to cite: Paz, I.; Willinger, B.; Gires, A.; Monier, L.; Zobrist, C.; Tisserand, B.; Tchiguirinskaia, I.; Schertzer, D. Multifractal Comparison of Reflectivity and Polarimetric Rainfall Data from C- and X-Band Radars and Respective Hydrological Responses of a Complex Catchment Model. Preprints 2017, 2017100096. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints201710.0096.v1 Paz, I.; Willinger, B.; Gires, A.; Monier, L.; Zobrist, C.; Tisserand, B.; Tchiguirinskaia, I.; Schertzer, D. Multifractal Comparison of Reflectivity and Polarimetric Rainfall Data from C- and X-Band Radars and Respective Hydrological Responses of a Complex Catchment Model. Preprints 2017, 2017100096. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints201710.0096.v1

Abstract

This paper presents a comparison between rain gauges, C-band and X-band radar data over an instrumented and regulated catchment of the Paris region, as well as their respective hydrological impacts with the help of flow observations and a semi-distributed hydrological model. Both radars confirm the high spatial variability of the rainfall down to their space resolution (respectively one kilometer and 250 m) and therefore underscore limitations of semi-distributed simulations. The use of the polarimetric capacity of the Météo-France C-band radar was limited to corrections of the horizontal reflectivity and its rainfall estimates are adjusted with the help of a rain gauge network. On the contrary, neither calibration was performed for the polarimetric X-band radar of the Ecole des Ponts ParisTech (below called ENPC X-band radar), nor any optimization of its scans. In spite of that and the non-negligible fact that the catchment was much closer to the C-band radar than to the X-band radar (20 km vs. 40 km), the latter seems to perform at least as well as the former, but with a higher scale resolution. This characteristic was best highlighted with the help of a multifractal analysis of the respective radar data, which also shows that the X-band radar was able to pick up a few extremes that were smoothed out by the C-band radar.

Keywords

complex catchment; weather X-band radars; flash floods; multifractals; spatio-temporal variability

Subject

Environmental and Earth Sciences, Environmental Science

Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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