Transboundary Rainfall Estimation Using Commercial Microwave Links

Unlike actual rainfall, the spatial extent of rainfall maps is often determined by administrative and political boundaries. Similarly, data from commercial microwave links (CMLs) is usually acquired on a national basis and exchange among countries is limited. Up to now, this has prohibited the generation of transboundary CML-based rainfall maps despite the great extension of networks across the world. We present CML based transboundary rainfall maps for the first time, using independent CML data sets from Germany and the Czech Republic. We show that straightforward algorithms used for quality control strongly reduce anomalies in the results. We find that, after quality control, CML-based rainfall maps can be generated via joint and consistent processing, and that these maps allow to seamlessly visualize rainfall events traversing the German-Czech border. This demonstrates that quality control represents a crucial step for large-scale (e.g., continental) CML-based rainfall estimation.

Automated summary

Unlike actual rainfall, the spatial extent of rainfall maps is often constrained by administrative and political boundaries, limiting transboundary exchange of data. However, this study presents the first transboundary rainfall maps generated using commercial microwave link (CML) data sets from Germany and the Czech Republic. By applying quality control algorithms, anomalies in the results are significantly reduced, enabling seamless visualization of rainfall events across the German-Czech border. This highlights the importance of quality control for large-scale CML-based rainfall estimation.