A review of uncertainty sources on weather ground-based radar for rainfall estimation

Efforts in hydrometeorology are concentrated on finding the causes of the ground based radar uncertainty sources for rainfall estimation recently. The error sources are interactions between radar with atmosphere and topography. Radar singly often covers systematic error whereas atmospheric and topographic errors are relevant to location and precipitation pattern. This article reviews uncertainty sources on weather ground-based radar in order to rainfall estimation that have been discussed in nine main categories includes; the range effects, radar signal attenuation, beam blockage, vertical air motion and precipitation drift, ground clutter, anomalous propagation, vertical variability of the precipitation system, variability of the Z-R relationship and bright band. Topographic errors such as ground clutter and beam blockage primarily can be eliminated by attentive in site selection. Atmospheric errors such as vertical air motion and precipitation drift can filter or eliminated by calibration methods. Systematic errors include radar signal attenuation and anomalous propagation is the result of structural changes in the radar waves in space. Thus, this review is explored the characteristics of uncertainty error resources and a comprehensive appraisal of experimental procedures is provided.

Keywords:

ground-based radar , uncertainty sources , rainfall