Introduction

Development of Digital Meteorological Surfaces for Modeling of Hydrological Processes in Hawai‘i

This project is developing a system to automatically produce near-real-time climate map products, beginning with monthly and daily rainfall, at high spatial resolution.

Development of Digital Meteorological Surfaces for Modeling of Hydrological Processes in Hawai‘i

Figure 1. Sample digital monthly rainfall map (December 2019) automatically produced in near real time from telemetered raingage data.
Sample digital monthly rainfall map (December 2019) automatically produced in near real time from telemetered raingage data.

SPONSOR:
National Science Foundation – EPSCoR

PROJECT PERIOD:
03/07/18 – 05/31/20

PROJECT PIs:
Thomas Giambelluca (part of a larger project entitled “‘Ike Wai”, led by Gwen Jacobs, UH Cyberinfrastructure)

ABSTRACT:
Gridded month rainfall products are highly useful for water resources analysis and planning, ecological modeling, and other applications. Under the current situation, maps are produced at irregular intervals of at least several years; however, maps for recent months are generally not available. By automating and streamlining data acquisition, data QA/QC, gap filling, interpolation, and dissemination, this initiative will result in regularly updated maps with the goal of releasing a preliminary product within one month of the end of the most recent month. Having more up-to-date analyses available will potentially facilitate additional applications for these data sets, such as drought planning and wildfire management.

Project Publications:

Luo, X., Wang, B., Frazier, A.G., and Giambelluca, T.W. 2020. Distinguishing variability regimes of Hawaiian summer rainfall: Quasi-biennial an interdecadal oscillations. Geophysical Research Letters  47: e2020GL091260, doi: 10.1029/2020GL091260.

Longman, R.J., Newman, A., Giambelluca, T.W., and Lucas, M. 2020. Characterizing the uncertainty and assessing the value of gap-filling daily rainfall data at multiple temporal resolutions in Hawai‘i. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology 59: 1261-1276, doi: 10.1175/JAMC-D-20-0007.1

Nugent, A.D., Longman, R. Trauernicht, C., Lucas, M., Diaz, H.F., and Giambelluca, T.W. 2020. Fire and rain: The legacy of Hurricane Lane in Hawai‘i. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 101: E954-E967, doi: 10.1175/BAMS-D-19-0104.1.

Longman, R.J., Frazier, A.G., Newman, A.J., Giambelluca, T.W., Schanzebach, D., Kagawa-Viviani, A.K., Needham, H., Arnold, J.R., and Clark, M.P. 2019. High-resolution gridded daily rainfall and temperature for the Hawaiian Islands (1990-2014). Journal of Hydrometeorology 20, 489–508, doi: 10.1175/JHM-D-18-0112.1.

URL to project page:
https://www.hawaii.edu/epscor/ike-wai-project/

 

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR