Flood in Asheville, NC, Sep. 2004. Photo credit: FEMA

More Images: Location of regional instrumentation planned for HMT-SE Location of basin-scale instrumentation planned for HMT-SE Click image for more detail Contact:  Rob Cifelli

HMT-Southeast Planning Underway

HMT investigators met last month in Huntsville, AL with NASA representatives and researchers from Duke University and the University of Iowa to discuss plans for an HMT-Southeast "pilot study" (referred to as HMT-SE), to be deployed in western North Carolina during May-October 2013.

HMT-SE will focus on quantitative precipitation estimation (QPE) and will complement a similar effort by NASA to validate precipitation retrieval algorithms from the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) satellite constellation in the same region of North Carolina. The NASA field campaign is referred to as the GPM Convective and Orographic Precipitation and Hydrology Experiment (COPrHEx). In fact, NASA's motivation for leading a validation campaign in the Southeast is driven primarily by the desire to partner with NOAA HMT in precipitation research activities. In turn, HMT-SE turned its focus to western North Carolina to better leverage NASA's on-going ground validation (GV) activities in an area of orographic terrain where an existing network of ground-based sensors currently exists and where NASA scanning radars and a dense array of disdrometers are likely to be deployed. These multi-agency data sets will aid NOAA HMT research on QPE. HMT-SE—COPrHEx will involve NASA, NOAA, and academic partners.

NOAA plans to bring a number of instrument assets to the campaign including:

• 6 profiling radars (including 449 MHz and 915 MHz radars for wind profiling and S-Prof radars for profiling precipitation vertical structure);
• 6 surface sites with standard meteorology sensors (temperature, relative humidity, pressure, wind, and redundant precipitation measurements) as well as soil moisture (5-levels); and
• 2 additional sites with GPS-met sensors for integrated water vapor measurements. These GPS sites would be collocated with existing 915 MHz profilers (one operational at Charlotte and one at Raleigh that needs repairs)

NOAA will utilize assets from the NASA COPrHEx ground campaign as well as existing operational and academic institution (Duke University and University of Iowa) instrumentation. The combined infrastructure will provide an opportunity to baseline existing QPE systems, improve algorithms, and test new technologies within HMT's overall QPE Major Activity Area.