Using TRMM precipitation products for flood estimation from tropical cyclones

---

Diana Carolina Fernandez Rivera, Adrian Pedrozo Acuña, Pedro Noe Paredes Victoria, Miquel Angel Rico Ramirez

Tuesday 30 june 2015

16:30 - 16:45h at South America (level 0)

Themes: (T) Flood risk management and adaptation, (ST) Flooding along in rivers and coasts

Parallel session: 7J. Floodrisk - Assessment

---

The emergence of satellite precipitation products has provided new data sources for climatological, hydrological and ecological applications at the global scale. However, these products may contain a significant error, which imply poor to medium accuracy, in several regions of the world, when compared to ground measurements. In order to overcome this gap, merging ground based rain gauge observations with satellite rainfall estimates can be a reliable and useful precipitation dataset. In this work, we develop a merged precipitation product during the simultaneous incidence of two tropical cyclones in Mexico in September 2013 that is used as forcing data for a hydrodynamic model. The new product combines information from the TRMM Multi-Satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA) database, 3B42RT and 3B42V7, and rain gauge observations. The sensitivity of model to the three precipitation products is shown and error metrics between the simulated and observed flooded areas are estimated. Results suggest that the use of different model forcing data for hydrological purposes help to improve the characterization of flood events.