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Bankhead National Forest - SQUIRE example

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Bankhead National Forest - SQUIRE example

Overview

The Surface Quantitative Precipitation Estimates (SQUIRE) value added product that has radar estimated rainfall rates from CSAPR2 interpolated to a two-dimensional Cartesian grid. These rainfall estimates can then be used to estimate rain accumulations. In this example, we show how to estimate the monthly accumulation over the CSAPR2 domain using SQUIRE.

Prerequisites

ConceptsImportanceNotes
Intro to CartopyNecessary
Understanding of NetCDFHelpfulFamiliarity with metadata structure
GeoPandasNecessaryFamiliarity with Geospatial Plotting
Py-ART / Radar FoundationsNecessaryBasics of Weather Radar
  • Time to learn: 30 minutes

Current List of Supported Sites of Interest

SiteLatLon
M134.34525-87.33842
S434.46451-87.23598
S2034.65401-87.29264
S3034.38501-86.92757
S4034.17932-87.45349
S1034.343611-87.350278

Pending List of Supported Sites of Interest

SiteLatLon
S1334.343889-87.350556
S1434.343333-87.350833
BNF Sensors

Load all of the available SQUIRE data.

SQUIRE Dataset Description

The SQUIRE dataset provides several variables on a two-dimensional Cartesian grid for quantitative precipitation analysis.

Radar data from CSAPR2 are interpolated to this grid through the following steps:

  • Selecting radar gates at the lowest non-blocked elevation.

  • Applying the Barnes interpolation scheme (Barnes, 1964) with a radius of influence that varies by distance from the radar to account for beam spreading.

  • Mapping the interpolated values onto a 500 m-resolution 2-D grid.

Variables:

  • rain_rate_A — Rainfall rate derived from the CSAPR2 specific attenuation (k).

  • rain_rate_Z — Rainfall rate derived from the CSAPR2 attenuation-corrected reflectivity.

  • corrected_reflectivity — The attenuation-corrected reflectivity field from CSAPR2, obtained from the CMAC product.

  • lowest_height — The representative height (in meters) for the reflectivity and rainfall-rate estimates at each grid point. Because rainfall cannot be retrieved directly at the surface within radar volumes, this value indicates the altitude from which the rainfall rate is inferred. It provides context for assessing whether rainfall rates are representative of precipitation reaching the surface, as melting-layer enhancement may artificially increase reflectivity and estimated rates aloft.

Reference

Barnes, S. L. (1964). A technique for maximizing details in numerical weather map analysis. Journal of Applied Meteorology, 3(4), 396–409. https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0450(1964)003

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Add functions for the scale bar.

Load the kmz files

BNF_Schematic
M1
S10
S13
S14
S20
S30
S40
S3
S4
Original_Proclaimed_National_Forests_and_National_Grasslands_(Feature_Layer).kml
Original_Proclaimed_National_Forests_and_National_Grasslands__Feature_Layer_

Plot the SQUIRE accumulation for a month of data.

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  ax.legend()
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