The Mediterranean area is a particular meteorological environment and a weather forecasting challenge, because severe weather events of different nature often originates over the relatively warm sea and develops to hit coastal regions, often rich in assets and densely populated, causing major damages and casualties. In the last years tropical-like precipitation systems, i.e. with large horizontal extent, tropical cyclone features (i.e. Medicanes), or characterized by very deep and intense convection, have become more and more frequent. A number of studies have recently been devoted to the analysis of these severe weather events, both from the observational and numerical modeling points of view. The complex orography that characterizes most of the Mediterranean coast, as well as the need to monitor these severe events during their offshore development, make the use of conventional ground-based rain measuring systems (i.e., raingauges and weather radars) inadequate to fully provide the observational details which are necessary to improve the monitoring and forecasting of precipitation in terms of time, location, and amounts. The increasing global multi-mission Earth Observation (EO) observational capacity provides today an unprecedented potential to observe, describe and predict hydrological parameters, such as precipitation, and key processes governing the water cycle from local to global scales. Satellite precipitation products are developed and made available by space agencies (NASA, NOAA, JAXA) and through international programs/projects, and can be used for floods and droughts monitoring, hydrological applications, and for climate studies. The goal of this presentation is to show the potentials of the constellation of passive microwave (PMW) radiometers orbiting around the Earth to monitor precipitation associated to extreme events, also in particularly challenging regions, with complex orography and extremely variable surface conditions, such as the Mediterranean area. Such constellation has recently reached an optimal configuration thanks to the advent of the NASA/JAXA Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission. By combining the overpasses from different radiometers it is possible to obtain precipitation estimates at different temporal scales (i.e., daily, monthly) in agreement with reference ground-based radar and raingauge measurements. Moreover, the GPM Core Observatory is equipped with the most advanced microwave radiometer (GPM Microwave Imager, GMI) in terms of spatial resolution and channel assortment, and with the first spaceborne dual-frequency precipitation radar (DPR), allowing the analysis of the 3-D structure of precipitation. Extreme precipitation events that hit the coast of Italy in the last years will be presented and analyzed.
Role and capabilities of GPM mission in the characterization and monitoring of extreme precipitation events in the Mediterranean region
Panegrossi G;D Casella;S Dietrich;A C Marra;P Sanò;L Baldini;M Petracca;
2016
Abstract
The Mediterranean area is a particular meteorological environment and a weather forecasting challenge, because severe weather events of different nature often originates over the relatively warm sea and develops to hit coastal regions, often rich in assets and densely populated, causing major damages and casualties. In the last years tropical-like precipitation systems, i.e. with large horizontal extent, tropical cyclone features (i.e. Medicanes), or characterized by very deep and intense convection, have become more and more frequent. A number of studies have recently been devoted to the analysis of these severe weather events, both from the observational and numerical modeling points of view. The complex orography that characterizes most of the Mediterranean coast, as well as the need to monitor these severe events during their offshore development, make the use of conventional ground-based rain measuring systems (i.e., raingauges and weather radars) inadequate to fully provide the observational details which are necessary to improve the monitoring and forecasting of precipitation in terms of time, location, and amounts. The increasing global multi-mission Earth Observation (EO) observational capacity provides today an unprecedented potential to observe, describe and predict hydrological parameters, such as precipitation, and key processes governing the water cycle from local to global scales. Satellite precipitation products are developed and made available by space agencies (NASA, NOAA, JAXA) and through international programs/projects, and can be used for floods and droughts monitoring, hydrological applications, and for climate studies. The goal of this presentation is to show the potentials of the constellation of passive microwave (PMW) radiometers orbiting around the Earth to monitor precipitation associated to extreme events, also in particularly challenging regions, with complex orography and extremely variable surface conditions, such as the Mediterranean area. Such constellation has recently reached an optimal configuration thanks to the advent of the NASA/JAXA Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission. By combining the overpasses from different radiometers it is possible to obtain precipitation estimates at different temporal scales (i.e., daily, monthly) in agreement with reference ground-based radar and raingauge measurements. Moreover, the GPM Core Observatory is equipped with the most advanced microwave radiometer (GPM Microwave Imager, GMI) in terms of spatial resolution and channel assortment, and with the first spaceborne dual-frequency precipitation radar (DPR), allowing the analysis of the 3-D structure of precipitation. Extreme precipitation events that hit the coast of Italy in the last years will be presented and analyzed.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
