HydroMet

General description

Precipitation is an essential variable to assess the severity of many extreme weather events. As a first assessment, it might be sufficient to look at daily rainfall totals for a given region. However, an in-depth analysis requires local information on severity, affected area and statistical return times to enable the development of fitted adaptation strategies.

HydroMet fulfils this need by providing information on the intensity, duration, spatial extent and return time of extreme precipitation events over Europe based on DestinE Climate DT model data. The data is produced from the different Climate DT models ICON, IFS-FESOM and IFS-NEMO for the historical period from 1990-2014 and the projection (2015-2049). All underlying models run at approximately 5 km resolution, providing local information.

The extreme precipitation parameters produced by HydroMet are based on existing products of the German Meteorological Service (DWD):

  • KOSTRA2020, the latest version of KOSTRA-DWD

  • CatRaRE, Catalogue of Radar-based heavy Rainfall Events

KOSTRA is a coordinated effort across German Federal states to develop methods for evaluating precipitation extremes from gauge-based observations. The system, developed over three decades, provides data about precipitation levels, duration and the annual return interval. CatRaRE is a software package able to detect and define extreme rain events and, at the same time, generate a catalogue with meteorological and geographical information for each event. At DWD, it is applied to radar data.

HydroMet combines both products for a consistent dataset on the climatological scale. The data is available with the identifier EO.DWD.STAT.HYDROMET_EXTREMES on the DestinE Data Lake.

Methods

The technical description summarises the methods from KOSTRA and CatRaRE and how they are applied in HydroMet.

Both methods used in HydroMet have been published in peer-reviewed journals:

Data portfolio

HydroMet provides information on the intensity of extreme precipitation as gridded netCDF files and event catalogues in CSV format. More information on the provided indicators can be found in the full data portfolio or on the landing page on the DestinE Data Lake

Accessing the data

Note

Data for this application will become available on the DestinE Data Lake in a forthcoming update.

Scientific Evaluation

Note

Scientific evaluation for this application will be available in a forthcoming update.