New service interface for River Forecasting Center derived quantitative precipitation estimates

Fact Sheet 2013-3035
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Abstract

For more than a decade, the National Weather Service (NWS) River Forecast Centers (RFCs) have been estimating spatially distributed rainfall by applying quality-control procedures to radar-indicated rainfall estimates in the eastern United States and other best practices in the western United States to producea national Quantitative Precipitation Estimate (QPE) (National Weather Service, 2013). The availability of archives of QPE information for analytical purposes has been limited to manual requests for access to raw binary file formats that are difficult for scientists who are not in the climatic sciences to work with. The NWS provided the QPE archives to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and the contents of the real-time feed from the RFCs are being saved by the USGS for incorporation into the archives. The USGS has applied time-series aggregation and added latitude-longitude coordinate variables to publish the RFC QPE data. Web services provide users with direct (index-based) data access, rendered visualizations of the data, and resampled raster representations of the source data in common geographic information formats.
Publication type Report
Publication Subtype USGS Numbered Series
Title New service interface for River Forecasting Center derived quantitative precipitation estimates
Series title Fact Sheet
Series number 2013-3035
DOI 10.3133/sir20133035
Year Published 2013
Language English
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Publisher location Reston, VA
Contributing office(s) Wisconsin Water Science Center
Description 2 p.
Online Only (Y/N) Y
Additional Online Files (Y/N) N
Google Analytic Metrics Metrics page
Additional publication details