The new precipitation algorithm for the three-wire Geonor gauge of the U.S. Climate Reference Network – objectives, description and performance

The U. S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN) forms the backbone for climate monitoring in the U. S. Its two main components are observations of temperature and precipitation. The precipitation is collected in a Geonor weighing gauge outfitted with three wires for depth measurement. By utilizing the measurement from these three wires an accurate and reliable estimation of precipitation amount is obtained. In the near future the depth measurements from the network sites will be available at 5-minute interval. This paper discusses the development of the algorithm for estimation of the precipitation from these depth measurements. It will discuss the objectives and how they are met with example cases. Some overall comparison statistics with other gauges will also be shown.