TY - JOUR
T1 - The MSG technique
T2 - Improving commercial microwave link rainfall intensity by using rain area detection from meteosat second generation
AU - Kumah, K.
AU - Hoedjes, J.C.B.
AU - David, Noam
AU - Maathuis, B.H.P.
AU - Gao, H. Oliver
AU - Su, Bob Z.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors express their gratitude to Safaricom for providing the MWL RSL data and TAHMO for providing additional gauge stations at the measurement site. We appreciate the VP Group in Naivasha for their cooperation during the Naivasha fieldwork, and Paul Ruoya and the farmers in the Naivasha catchment for permitting field measurements on their farm.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
Financial transaction number:
342138746
PY - 2021/8/19
Y1 - 2021/8/19
N2 - Commercial microwave link (MWL) used by mobile telecom operators for data transmission can provide hydro-meteorologically valid rainfall estimates according to studies in the past decade. For the first time, this study investigated a new method, the MSG technique, that uses Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) satellite data to improve MWL rainfall estimates. The investigation, conducted during daytime, used MSG optical (VIS0.6) and near IR (NIR1.6) data to estimate rain areas along a 15 GHz, 9.88 km MWL for classifying the MWL signal into wet–dry periods and estimate the baseline level. Additionally, the MSG technique estimated a new parameter, wet path length, representing the length of the MWL that was wet during wet periods. Finally, MWL rainfall intensity estimates from this new MSG and conventional techniques were compared to rain gauge estimates. The results show that the MSG technique is robust and can estimate gauge comparable rainfall estimates. The evaluation scores every three hours of RMSD, relative bias, and r2 based on the entire evaluation period results of the MSG technique were 2.61 mm h−1, 0.47, and 0.81, compared to 2.09 mm h−1, 0.04, and 0.84 of the conventional technique, respectively. For convective rain events with high intensity spatially varying rainfall, the results show that the MSG technique may approximate the actual mean rainfall estimates better than the conventional technique.
AB - Commercial microwave link (MWL) used by mobile telecom operators for data transmission can provide hydro-meteorologically valid rainfall estimates according to studies in the past decade. For the first time, this study investigated a new method, the MSG technique, that uses Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) satellite data to improve MWL rainfall estimates. The investigation, conducted during daytime, used MSG optical (VIS0.6) and near IR (NIR1.6) data to estimate rain areas along a 15 GHz, 9.88 km MWL for classifying the MWL signal into wet–dry periods and estimate the baseline level. Additionally, the MSG technique estimated a new parameter, wet path length, representing the length of the MWL that was wet during wet periods. Finally, MWL rainfall intensity estimates from this new MSG and conventional techniques were compared to rain gauge estimates. The results show that the MSG technique is robust and can estimate gauge comparable rainfall estimates. The evaluation scores every three hours of RMSD, relative bias, and r2 based on the entire evaluation period results of the MSG technique were 2.61 mm h−1, 0.47, and 0.81, compared to 2.09 mm h−1, 0.04, and 0.84 of the conventional technique, respectively. For convective rain events with high intensity spatially varying rainfall, the results show that the MSG technique may approximate the actual mean rainfall estimates better than the conventional technique.
KW - Commercial microwave link
KW - Meteosat Second Generation
KW - Rain area detection
KW - Rainfall intensity
KW - ITC-ISI-JOURNAL-ARTICLE
KW - ITC-GOLD
UR - https://ezproxy2.utwente.nl/login?url=https://library.itc.utwente.nl/login/2021/isi/kumah_msg.pdf
U2 - 10.3390/rs13163274
DO - 10.3390/rs13163274
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85113378476
VL - 13
SP - 1
EP - 17
JO - Remote sensing
JF - Remote sensing
SN - 2072-4292
IS - 16
M1 - 3274
ER -