Rainfall estimation from a German-wide commercial microwave link network: optimized processing and validation for 1 year of data

Graf, Maximilian; Chwala, Christian; Polz, Julius; Kunstmann, Harald

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-2931-2020

Articles | Volume 24, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-2931-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-2931-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 24, issue 6

Research article

|

04 Jun 2020

Research article |

| 04 Jun 2020

Rainfall estimation from a German-wide commercial microwave link network: optimized processing and validation for 1 year of data

Maximilian Graf, Christian Chwala, Julius Polz, and Harald Kunstmann

Data sets

Historische stündliche RADOLAN-Raster der Niederschlagshöhe (binär), version V001 DWD https://opendata.dwd.de/climate_environment/CDC/grids_germany/hourly/radolan/historical/bin/

Model code and software

pycomlink software package C. Chwala, F. Keis, M. Graf, D. Sereb, and Y. Boose https://github.com/pycomlink/pycomlink

Video supplement

Showcase video of hourly RADOLAN and CML rainfall maps M. Graf, C. Chwala, J. Polz, and H. Kunstmann https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3759208

Short summary

Commercial microwave links (CMLs), which form large parts of the backhaul from the ubiquitous cellular communication networks, can be used to estimate path-integrated rainfall rates. This study presents the processing and evaluation of the largest CML data set to date, covering the whole of Germany with almost 4000 CMLs. The CML-derived rainfall information compares well to a standard precipitation data set from the German Meteorological Service, which combines radar and rain gauge data.