extreme precipitation posterprecip.eas.cornell.edu/docs/poster.pdf · 2010. 9. 17. ·...
TRANSCRIPT
Extreme Precipita-on in a Changing Climate for New York and the New England States William Merkel & Quan D. Quan, Natural Resources Conserva:on Service, USDA, Beltsville, MD Art DeGaetano & Dan Zarrow, Northeast Regional Climate Center, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
The Northeast Regional Climate Center (NRCC), one of six regional climate centers in the US, facilitates and
enhances the collec:on, dissemina:on and use of climate data and informa:on for the northeast United States
h@p://www.nrcc.cornell.edu
The Natural Resources Conserva-on Service (NRCS), part of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), assists land owners and managers conserve soil, water,
and other natural resources. h@p://www.nrcs.usda.gov
http://www.precip.net/
Why is extreme precipita-on analysis important? Extreme precipita:on events can produce localized and widespread flooding with damage to property, degrada:on of water quality, and poten:al loss of life. The climatology of very large precipita:on events is therefore a cri:cal component of engineering design and regula:ons for structures and facili:es that must withstand or protect against such events.
Why is this par-cular study important? The last comprehensive climatology of extreme rainfall events on a na:onal level was detailed in Technical Paper 40, published by the United States Weather Bureau (now the Na:onal Weather Service) in 1961. While subsequent studies have been performed for other regions of the country, many agencies and companies in the Northeast are s:ll using this half-‐century old data. This new extreme precipita:on study will including rainfall events through the end of 2008 in its analysis, providing an updated standard upon which regula:ons, engineering design, and policy can be based.
How is this analysis being performed? Climatological precipita:on data is collected and quality controlled at daily, hourly, and subhourly dura:ons for sta:ons across the Northeast. A par:al dura:on series, represen:ng the highest rainfall values, is generated for each sta:on and fit to a Beta-‐P distribu:on. From the distribu:on, extreme precipita:on returns are calculated at the 1yr, 2yr, 5yr, 10yr, 25yr, 50yr, 100yr, 200yr, and 500yr recurrence periods. This output then undergoes a series of gridding and smoothing steps to interpolate and extrapolate the data to an approximately half-‐mile by half-‐mile grid.
Which states does this study cover? The Northeast Regional Climate Center has partnered with the Natural Resources Conserva:on Service state offices in New York, Connec:cut, Rhode Island, Massachuse`s, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine to produce extreme rainfall sta:s:cs for those seven states.
A public, user-‐friendly web interface will offer fast and easy access to the data in a variety of formats. Users will be able to set their loca:on by address, la:tude/longitude coordinates, or through an intui:ve clickable, zoomable map. The data will output in a variety of map, chart, text, and GIS formats. This web site is currently available at h@p://www.precip.net/
In addi:on, a set of tools to monitor rainfall events in real:me is under development. Using the Northeast Regional Climate Center’s Applied Climate Informa:on System (ACIS) infrastructure to retrieve daily precipita:on data, maps and lists will be generated to indicate sta:ons that have exceeded their extreme precipita:on return periods for a given date.
Background Web Tools