Usefulness of relay-information-transfer for radar QPE

This study proposes a method of relay-information-transfer for radar QPE (quantitative precipitation estimation) to overcome the limitation of the current QPE in Korea. The Z-R relationship was selected as the QPE information to be transferred. To examine the applicability of the proposed method, three different cases of relay-information-transfer were considered: (1) from the sea to inland, (2) from inland to another inland location, and (3) over a long distance. The results were: (1) Between the two parameters of the Z-R relationship, the parameter A was found to have an explanatory power of more than 70% of the Z-R relationship from one radar to the other. (2) All three cases showed that the relay-information-transfer of the parameter A was highly applicable, especially in the initial period of a storm. (3) Areal average rainfall and the root mean square error of the radar rain rate also confirmed that the relay-information-transfer method resulted in more reasonable estimates of the parameter A in the initial period of a storm. After the initial period, however, both the conventional method and the method proposed in this study were found to provide similar and reasonable estimates.