EMS Annual Meeting Abstracts
Vol. 18, EMS2021-239, 2021, updated on 22 Dec 2023
https://doi.org/10.5194/ems2021-239
EMS Annual Meeting 2021
© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Measuring tropical rainfall with a dense Commercial Microwave Link network in Nigeria

Arjan Droste1, Aart Overeem1,2, Jan Priebe3, Daniele Tricarico3, Linda Bogerd1, Hidde Leijnse1,2, and Remko Uijlenhoet4
Arjan Droste et al.
  • 1Wageningen University & Research, Hydrology and Quantitative Water Management Group, Wageningen, The Netherlands
  • 2Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, R&D Observations and Data Technology, De Bilt, The Netherlands
  • 3AgriTech / Mobile for Development, GSM Association (GSMA), London, UK
  • 4Delft University of Technology, Department of Water Management; Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft, The Netherlands

Accurate, global rainfall estimates are crucial for many fields, e.g. agriculture or disaster management. While developed countries typically enjoy a dense network of rain gauges and radar, in many less developed areas across the globe, precipitation measurement networks are sparse. To obtain rainfall data for these regions, opportunistic sensing techniques are especially valuable: the use of unconventional sources to extract valuable data that can allow us to estimate precipitation. One of the more prominent data sources is the use of Commercial Microwave Links –CMLs– to measure rainfall, by making use of the signal attenuation between cell phone towers. This method of estimating rainfall has been mostly tested and applied in developed countries that already have reasonable coverage of conventional precipitation measurements. However, the strongest benefits are to be gained in developing regions lacking such measurement networks, where CML data can make a big difference. Only few studies address this, generally using relatively small datasets.

This research focuses on tropical CML rainfall estimation in Nigeria. Nigeria has a dense network of CMLs and relatively few official measurement stations, making it an interesting area to study the effectiveness of CML precipitation measurements. Our dataset spans 4 regions within Nigeria, from the coast to inland, with several large cities (Lagos; Ibadan) as well as areas with less dense CML networks to investigate the influence. We employ the open-source R package RAINLINK to obtain 15-min rainfall maps based on data from several thousand CMLs during the rainy season. We optimise the most important RAINLINK parameters by comparing to rain gauge data, considering local network and environmental conditions. In addition, disdrometer data from Nigeria (or similar climates) are used to compute the values of the physically-based coefficients relating specific attenuation to rainfall rate.

 

How to cite: Droste, A., Overeem, A., Priebe, J., Tricarico, D., Bogerd, L., Leijnse, H., and Uijlenhoet, R.: Measuring tropical rainfall with a dense Commercial Microwave Link network in Nigeria, EMS Annual Meeting 2021, online, 6–10 Sep 2021, EMS2021-239, https://doi.org/10.5194/ems2021-239, 2021.

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