Toward a climate-quality high-resolution precipitation dataset: An early look at the National Mosaic and Multisensor Quantitative Precipitation Estimate (NMQ/Q2)

A reanalysis of archived NEXRAD data using the National Mosaic and Multisensor Quantitative Precipitation Estimate (NMQ/Q2) algorithms developed at NOAA's National Severe Storms Laboratory provides gridded precipitation rates at a spatial resolution of 1 km, with a temporal frequency of five minutes. Such an increase in resolution and temporal frequency over the current state of the art precipitation products allows for finer-scale features to be studied.

While the reanalysis is still in its early stages of production, at least one full year is complete. The result of 1-km data at a five-minute frequency is over 7 billion data points per day. Such a wealth of information allows for a wide variety of statistics to be explored. As an introduction to this dataset, some basic statistics are explored, such as frequency of various rainrates and their relationship to other variables and parameters such as precipitation type, time of year, and geography.

This is one of many steps toward a product that will eventually span the entire NEXRAD period of record, from 1997 to the present. Such an extensive dataset will allow for much improved studies in the climatology and modeling of precipitation.