Eva Yamamoto - High Intensity Isolated Precipitation Features
Overview: Numerous isolated precipitation features (PFs) can have similar rain intensities as organized ones and thus have potential to cause catastrophic flooding, landslides, and infrastructure damage. Understanding more about the properties of these storm systems can help improve forecast analysis, and improve mitigation and disaster response. For this project, I am doing a global analysis to sort out when and where high intensity isolated PFs were formed using GPM DPR data and indirect measurements of latent heating from GPM.
Mentor: Chuntao Liu
2022 GPM Mentorship Program
Eva Yamamoto - High Intensity Isolated Precipitation Features
Participant Name: Eva Yamamoto
Project: High Intensity Isolated Precipitation Features
Affiliation: Kyoto University, Japan
Current role: PhD Student
Mentor: Chuntao Liu
Download Project Overview Highlights (.pptx)
Download Final Presentation (.pdf)
Why are you participating in this program?
I participated in the AGU Workshop beforehand, and it was really useful. I was interested to know more about GPM and the opportunity to participate in the GPM Mentorship Program seemed like something I could not miss.
Tell us about your project
Numerous isolated precipitation features (PFs) can have similar rain intensities as organized ones and thus have potential to cause catastrophic flooding, landslides, and infrastructure damage. Understanding more about the properties of these storm systems can help improve forecast analysis, and as a result improve mitigation and response efforts for natural disaster events. For this project, I am doing a global analysis to sort out when and where high intensity isolated PFs were formed using GPM DPR data and indirect measurements of latent heating from GPM. I am also analyzing in which environmental conditions such PFs were formed.
Preliminary findings show that the multiple isolated PFs with high intensity rain are mostly formed in the tropics. Unlike the broad definition of isolated PFs which are mostly shallow, these high intensity isolated PFs form deeper PFs. The contribution to latent heating shows that these isolated PFs contribute mostly in mid altitude. Our findings also show that ERA5 Reanalysis has potential to be used to understand the properties of these PFs. This type of analysis and results may be beneficial for the scientific community and hydrological modelers as it can help elucidate more about the life cycle of these storm systems in greater detail and provide valuable information for improving forecasts of weather and climate.
(Top) A global analysis of where high intensity isolated PFs were formed. (Middle) An evaluation of general PFs, highlighting that about 20% are shallow. (Bottom) An evaluation of high intensity isolated PFs, highlighting that they form deeper PFs. Credits: E Yamamoto
What communities or organizations may benefit from your case study project?
The scientific community and hydrological modelers.
What is something surprising that you have learned about the GPM mission, the data, or applying GPM data for applications?
It is surprising that the visualization of data can be very simple.
What is a challenge you faced with using remote sensing data? Any lessons learned that helped overcome this barrier?
Remote sensing data is sometimes large in size and takes time to download and visualize it. Yet, there are some ways to visualize the data in a simple way.
How do you plan to use GPM in the future?
I hope to try and apply information learned to support my hydrological modelling efforts.