Operational rainfall monitoring in southern Ecuador. Towards the development of a national weather radar network.
Final Report Abstract
The aim of the knowledge transfer project RadarNet Sur was to set up a prototypical rain radar network consisting of three imaging X-band radars, to operate them operationally and to develop exemplary applications for weather forecasting and agriculture, planning (hydropower, infrastructure planning) and civil protection. For the implementation, a consortium of German and Ecuadorian universities, local planning institutions and public infrastructure institutions, the National Meteorological Service and NGOs from the environmental sector was formed. The challenge was to establish the first radar network in South America and in global high mountains (Andes) with complex topography. The consortium was able to fully set up the radar network of three radars with the world's highest-altitude instrument (Radar Cajas 4450 m above sea level) by 2015 and then operate it operationally. Exemplary applications were developed and derived, such as the initial calculation of high-resolution precipitation maps for planning (agriculture, hydropower, etc.) as well as risk maps for the Andean road system due to weather-related landslides. In the scientific field, the main objective was the derivation of precipitation from radar data. Here it has been shown that even local Z / R relationships for different rain types at different altitudes are not sufficient to ensure a qualitatively sufficient area-wide precipitation retrieval. However, calibration with ground measurements or machine learning techniques show very good possibilities to significantly improve the precipitation retrieval in complex high mountains. Furthermore, it could be shown for the 2015 Super El Niño that reports from the Ministry of Natural Hazard Protection coincided very well with the precipitation maps of the heavy rain events in the coastal area. Topographic pathways play a central role in the propagation of heavy rain cells on the coast into the highlands and its interandean basins. Unfortunately, at the end of the project, the operational radar network operation was severely disrupted by security issues and prolonged financial problems of the local partners. Additionally, the newly introduced SELEX radar systems appear technically extremely unstable, causing long downtimes of the individual devices. Currently the network is undergoing technical overhaul and administrative reorganization. In the public media, the radar network has received great attention, so that it can be extended beyond Ecuador now in further cooperation to northern Peru.
Publications
- 2013. Knowledge transfer for conservation and sustainable management of natural resources – a case study from southern Ecuador. Ecological Studies 221, 395-410
Günter S, Calvas B, Lotz T, Bendix J, Mosandl R
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-38137-9_28) - 2014. Catchment precipitation processes in the San Francisco valley in southern Ecuador: combined approach using high-resolution radar images and in situ observations. Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics 126,13-29
Fries A, Rollenbeck R, Bayer F, Ganzalez V, Oñate-Valdivieso F, Peters T, Bendix J
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1007/s00703-014-0335-3) - 2016. Climate variability and climate change in the Andes of southern Ecuador. In: Bogner FX, Bendix J, Beck E (Edts), Biodiversity Hotspot. NCI, Loja Ecuador, pp. 49-55
Bendix J, Rollenbeck R, Trachte K
- 2017. Analysis of rain types and their Z–R relationships at different locations in the high Andes of southern Ecuador. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology 56, 3065-3080
Orellana-Alvear J, Célleri R, Rollenbeck R, Bendix J
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1175/JAMC-D-17-0009.1) - 2017. Radarnet Sur – first weather radar network in tropical high mountains. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 98, 1235-1254
Bendix J, Fries A, Zárate J, Trachte K, Rollenbeck R, Pucha-Cofrep F, Paladines R, Palacios I, Orellana J, Oñate-Valdivieso F, Naranjo C, Mendoza L, Mejia D, Guallpa M, Gordillo F, Gonzalez-Jaramillo V, Dobbermann M, Célleri R, Carrillo C, Araque A, Achilles S
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-15-00178.1) - 2017. Temporal and spatial analysis of precipitation patterns in an Andean region of southern Ecuador using LAWR weather radar. Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics
Oñate-Valdivieso F, Fries A, Mendoza K, Gonzalez-Jaramillo V, Pucha-Cofrep F, Rollenbeck R, Bendix J
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1007/s00703-017-0535-8)
