A statistical–topographic model using an omnidirectional parameterization of the relief for mapping orographic rainfall

Abstract

The knowledge of rainfall patterns is a key issue for regionalization in hydroclimatic studies. In mountainous areas, the sparsity of the measurement network and the complexity of relationships between rainfall and topography make an accurate and reliable spatialization of rainfall amounts at the regional scale difficult. The purpose of this paper is to present an objective, analytical and automatic model of quantification and mapping of orographic rainfall applied to the north-eastern part of France but also applicable in other complex terrain. PLUVIA distributes point measurements of monthly, annual and climatological rainfall to regularly spaced grid cells through a multiple regression analysis of rainfall versus morpho-topographic parameters derived from a digital elevation model. The use of an omnidirectional parameterization of the topography induced by a windowing technique allows better account to be taken of the synopticscale weather systems generating the different rainfall quantities of interest and the spatial scale of orographic effects. It also provides a more physical interpretation of geographical and topographical parameters selected for spatial estimation. The application relies on a network of more than 150 rain gauges spread over 30 000 km 2 and concerns monthly to several yearly amounts of a sequence of 20 years. Advantages and limitations of the PLUVIA system are compared with those of two commonly used methods of multi-variate geostatistics: kriging with external drift and extended collocated co-kriging.

Development and validation of a high-resolution monthly gridded temperature and precipitation data set for Switzerland (1951-2000)

“…(3) PLUVIA (Drogue et al 2002). The relief in the vicinity of a given target location is described based on a whole range of elevation statistics of neighboring DEM gridpoints, such as the mean, standard deviation and various quantiles.…”

Topography and recent winter rainfall regime change in temperate Western European areas: a case study in the Rhine‐Meuse basin

“…Originally designed for mapping orographic areal rainfall amounts (Humbert et al, 1997;Drogue et al, 2002), the Pluvia model has been used in the present study to detect any statistical link between the MWRI and the relief of the area. Pluvia is based on an omnidirectional exploration of the topographical environment around each rain gauge.…”

Assessing precipitation distribution impacts on droughts on the island of Crete

“…Naoum and Tsanis (2003) studied the spatio-temporal rainfall characteristics on the island of Crete for a range of 12-50 yr and found that the rainfall-elevation correlation was significant. Drogue et al (2002) used an operational software called PLUVIA, which distributes point measurements of monthly, annual and climatological rainfall to regularly spaced grid cells through a multiple regression analysis of rainfall versus morpho-topographic parameters derived from a digital elevation model. According to Wotling et al (2000), a Gumbel rainfall distribution was performed by using a stepwise regression adjusted to rainfall records across Tahiti and an approximation of the pluviometric risk was provided.…”