Evaluating the ability of satellite-based quantitative precipitation estimates to resolve heavy precipitation amounts over 1, 3 and 6-hour intervals

Heavy precipitation amounts over 1, 3 and 6-hour intervals (e.g., with averaged recurrence intervals, or ARIs, beyond 1 year) are commonly used to predict the occurrence of flash floods. In areas with sparse radar and rain gauge networks, satellite-based quantitative precipitation estimates (QPE) are a potential alternative input to the NOAA National Weather Service (NWS) Flash Flood Monitoring and Prediction (FFMP) system, and their ability in representing the heavy precipitation needs to be examined. This study seeks to estimate the 1,3 and 6-hour mean areal precipitation (MAP) values associated with 1, 1.5 and 2 year ARIs from satellite QPE and examine how these values differ from those based on the NOAA NWS multi-sensor QPEs (based primarily on radar and gauge data). In this work, satellite-only QPEs produced via the Self-Calibrating Multi-satellite Precipitation Retrieval (SCaMPR) system between 2000 and 2007 are used to compute MAP series for 20 watersheds in central-eastern Texas. Partial duration series are constructed from the resultant MAP time series, and are subsequently employed in estimating parameters for the Generalized Extreme Value (GEV) distribution. The resultant MAP values associated with the prescribed ARIs are compared with similar estimates based on the NWS multi-sensor QPEs. The dependence of the estimated return intervals on basin size is also discussed.