Precipitation

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Learning outcomes
 By the end of the lesson, students should be able to:
 List and explain the forms & types of precipitation
 Identify and explain the measurement of precipitation
 Able to analyse precipitation using isohyetal, Thiessen and
arithmetic mean method

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Introduction
 Precipitation describes all forms of water that reach the
earth from the atmosphere.
 The magnitude and the forms of precipitation depends on
temperature & location – different country, different
season.
 E.g. rainfall, snowfall, hail, frost, dew etc

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Introduction
 Main source of precipitation is the water vapour derived
by the evaporation at the ocean.
 Evaporation takes place from the oceans and water
vapour is absorbed in the air streams moving across the
sea’s surface.
 The moist air keeps the water vapour absorbed until it
cools to below dew-point temperature when the vapour
is precipitated as rain, or if the temperature is sufficiently
low, as hails and snow.

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Introduction
 Tropical climate like Malaysia , rainfall is important
 Design need arise - rainfall occurs at extreme rates
 High rainfall rates can cause flooding in urban areas
 Absence of rain over long periods also reduce the stream flow
and causing lake levels to decline sharply
 Requirement of rainfall data helps the hydrological planning
and design works
 Significance of the study of precipitation form:
 Important aspects of rainfall
 Collection and analysis of rainfall data

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Forms of precipitation
 Depending on the prevailing meteorological conditions in
a particular area, precipitation may occur mainly in two
forms:
 Liquid precipitation – rain & drizzle
 Frozen precipitation – snow, glaze, sleet, hail and freezing rain.

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Rain
 Major form of precipitation.
 The term rainfall is used to describe precipitations in the
form of water drops of sizes larger than 0.5 mm.
 The maximum size is about 6 mm. Any drops larger than
this size will tend to break up into smaller sizes during its
fall from the clouds.
 Rainfall intensity :
Type Intensity
Light rain Trace to 2.5 mm/h
Moderate rain 2.5 mm/h to 7.5 mm/h
Heavy rain > 7.5 mm/h

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 Rainfall

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 snow
Snow consists of ice crystals which usually combine to form snow flakes.

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 drizzle
A fine sprinkle of numerous water droplets of size less than 0.5 mm and intensity less than 1 mm/h is known as
drizzle. Because the drops are so small, they appear to float in the air.

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 sleet
Sleet falls as small balls of ice. Sleet is often mixed with snow or freezing rain, so can leave an icy, slushy
covering on roads.

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 hail
It is showery precipitation in the form of irregular pellets or lumps of ice of size more than 8 mm.

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 Frost

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 Glaze
Freezing rain, falls as liquid, and then forms a coating of ice on exposed surfaces. Often, the icing only occurs on elevated surfaces,
such as trees and power lines. The greatest threat from this would be power outages. However, if the ground is cold enough, the
roads may become icy, and this is a particularly dangerous situation.

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 Freezing rain

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Types of precipitation
 Precipitation is classified according to the type of
mechanism that produces it.
 3 types of precipitation based on the mechanism are:
 Orographic precipitation
 Convective precipitation
 Frontal precipitation
 Cyclonic precipitation

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Orographic precipitation
 Occurs due to mechanical lifting.
 The process begins when winds carry moist air from a
water surface (usually the ocean) to a land surface.
 If a mountain range blocks the path of the wind, the moist
air must rise to pass over them.
 The increase in altitude causes the air to expand and its
pressure to decrease, resulting in lower temperature.

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 Orographic precipitation

The mechanical lifting of moist air over mountain barriers, causes heavy precipitation on the windward side

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 Orographic precipitation

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Convective precipitation
 Most common in Malaysia.
 Caused by heating of air at the interface with the ground.
 The heated air expands with a resultant reduction in
weight.
 During this period, increasing quantities of water vapour
are taken up; the warm moisture-laden air becomes
unstable; and pronounced vertical currents are developed.

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Convective precipitation
 Dynamic cooling takes place which then causes
condensation and precipitation.
 May be in the form of light showers or storms of
extremely high intensity.
 Typical for tropical regions.

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Convective precipitation

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Convective precipitation

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Frontal precipitation
 A front is the interface between two distinct air masses.
 Under certain favourable conditions when a warm air
mass and cold air mass meet, the warmer air mass is lifted
over the colder one with the formation of a front.
 The ascending warmer air cools adiabatically with the
consequent formation of clouds and precipitation.

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 Warm Front

Warm air overtakes a region of colder air, it will rise up on top of the cold air because of lesser density. To
observer on ground, initially he would feel relatively cold and clouds would form overhead

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 Warm front

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Warm front

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 Cold front

Cold air overtakes warm air, it pushes in under it and again warm air is forced to rise.

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 cold front

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Cold front

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Cyclonic precipitation
 This type of precipitation is due to lifting of moist air
converging into a low pressure belt, i.e., due to pressure
differences created by the unequal heating of the earth’s
surface.
 Here the winds blow spirally inward counterclockwise in
the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern
hemisphere.
 There are two main types of cyclones:
 tropical cyclone (also called hurricane or typhoon) of
comparatively small diameter of 300-1500 km causing high
wind velocity and heavy precipitation
 extra-tropical cyclone of large diameter up to 3000 km causing
wide spread frontal type precipitation.

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cyclone

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Tropical cyclone formation areas

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Hurricane katrina

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Hurricane katrina

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Typhoon Utor, Dec 2006, MY

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Typhoon Utor path

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Extratropical cyclone formation areas

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Measurement of precipitation
 Precipitation is expressed in terms of the depth to which
rainfall water would stand on an area if all the rain were
collected on it.
 E.g. 1 cm of rainfall over a catchment area of 1 km2
represents a volume of water equal to 104 m3.
 Precipitation is collected and measured in a rain gauge.
 Method used to measure rainfall:
 Non-recording gauges
 Recording gauge
 Weather radar

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Measurement of precipitation
 For placement of a rain gauge the following
considerations are important:
 The ground must be level and in the open, and the instrument must
present a horizontal catch surface.
 The gauge must be set as near the ground as possible to reduce wind
effects but it must be sufficiently high to prevent splashing, flooding etc.
 The instrument must be surrounded by an open fenced area of at least
5.5 m x 5.5 m. No object should be nearer to the instrument than 30 m
or twice the height of the obstruction.

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Non-recording gauges
 Only gives the total rainfall between readings which are
usually taken once a day.
 Usually consists of a 12.7 cm diameter funnel that directs
the rainfall into a smaller diameter tube (bottle).
 The rim of the collector is set in a horizontal plane at a
height of 30.5 cm above the GL.
 Water collected in the bottle is measured using a suitably
graduated measuring jar with 0.1mm accuracy.

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Non-recording gauges
 Rainfall is measured in mm or cm of water depth
 Rainfall is measured everyday at a particular time and is
recorded as the rainfall of that day.
 The receiving bottle cannot hold more than 10 cm of rain.
Hence on days of heavy rainfall, measurements are taken
more frequently and the last reading is taken at the
normal time. The sum of the rainfall measurements over
the past 24h is entered as the total rainfall of that day.

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Non-recording gauges

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Non-recording gauges

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Non-recording gauges

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Non-recording gauges

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Non-recording gauges

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Recording gauges
 Produce a continuous plot of rainfall against time and
provide valuable data of intensity and duration of rainfall.
 Common recording raingauges:
 Tipping-bucket
 Weighing-bucket

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Tipping bucket
 The catch from the funnel falls onto one of a pair of small
buckets. These buckets are so balanced that when
0.25mm of rain falls into one bucket, it tips bringing the
other bucket in position.
 The water from the tipped bucket is collected in a can.
 Tipping actuates an electrically driven pen to trace a
record on the graph paper mounted on a clock work
driven drum.

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Tipping bucket
 Water collected in the can is measured at regular
intervals to check the total rainfall recorded.
 The record from this raingauge gives the intensity of
rainfall.
 These can be installed in stations located in hilly and
inaccessible areas.

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Tipping bucket

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Tipping bucket

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Tipping bucket

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Tipping bucket

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Weighing bucket
 The catch empties into a bucket mounted on a weighing
scale.
 The weight of the bucket and its contents are recorded
on a clock work driven chart.
 The instrument gives a plot of cumulative rainfall against
time (mass curve of rainfall).
 In some of the instruments, the recording unit is so
devised that the pen reverses its direction at a preset
value.

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Weighing bucket

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Weather radar
 Used to estimate rainfall.
 Based on the principle of echo sounding.
 High frequency electromagnetic waves are sent out which
travel at the speed of light.
 Extremely small portion of this energy is reflected by
objects in the sky and detected by radar.
 By calibration of echo intensity with rainfall - can measure
the rainfall density.
 Use of weather radar together with the rain gauge data
provide useful estimates of rainfall for areas not covered
by rain gauges.
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Weather radar

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Presentation of rainfall data
 Rainfall data can be presented in two graphical forms:
 Rainfall hyetograph
 Rainfall mass curve

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Rainfall hyetograph
 It is a graph of rainfall intensity plotted against the time.
 It is a simple presentation and practical especially to show
the development of design storms to predict extreme
floods.
 The area under a hyetograph represents the total rainfall
received in a certain time.

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Rainfall hyetograph

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Rainfall mass curve
 Accumulated precipitation graph plotted against time.
 Rainfall mass curve used to extract information regarding
rainfall magnitudes and durations.
 Rainfall intensities at various time interval in a particular
storm can also be obtained

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Rainfall mass curve

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Determination of missing data
 Missing data may be encountered due to inoperative
gauges.
 Missing data can be estimated using the data from the
neighbouring stations.
 Two methods used to determine missing data:
 data:
 Arithmetic mean method – vary < 10%
 Normal ratio method – vary > 10%

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Aritmetic mean method
 Averages the rainfall values of the surrounding gauges are
calculated.
 Applied to missing gauge provided the normal annual
precipitation of the surrounding gauges is within 10% of
the missing gauges.
 Let P1, P2, P3, … PM are the annual rainfall neighbouring M
stations 1, 2, 3, …, M respectively, the missing annual
rainfall data, PX, at station X not included in the M
stations(still operating) calculated using the following
equation:
PX 
 P1  P2  P3  ....  PM 
M
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Normal ratio method
 If surrounding gauges have normal annual precipitation of
more than 10% of the normal annual precipitation at
station X, then PX is estimated by weighing the
precipitation at various stations by the ratio of normal
annual precipitation.
 P1 P2 PM 
NX    ....  
PX   1
N N 2 N M 

 Where N1, N2, N3, .. NM are the normal annual

precipitation at the surrounding M stations(still working)
and NX is the normal precipitation at station X.

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Example 2.1
 The normal annual precipitation at stations P, Q, R and S
are 80.97cm, 67.59cm, 76.28cm and 92.01cm. In a certain
year, the data at station S was missing due to a faulty
gauge. Stations P, Q and R recorded annual precipitations
of 91.11cm, 72.23cm and 79.89cm respectively. Determine
the missing data at station S.

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Solution for Example 2.1
 The normal annual rainfall values vary more than 10%
Therefore use the normal ratio method to determine the
missing data at station S

N P  80.79cm
 PP PQ PR 
N Q  67.59cm NS    
 P
N N N R

PX 
Q
N R  76.28cm
3
N S  92.01cm
 91.11 72.23 79.89 
PP  91.11cm 92.01  
 80.79 67.59 76.28 

PQ  72.23cm 3
PR  79.89cm  99.41cm

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Analysis of rainfall data
 Rain gauges represent only point sampling of the areal
distribution of a storm. In practice however, hydrological
analysis requires a knowledge of the rainfall over an area,
such as over a catchment.
 To convert the point rainfall values at various stations
into an average value over a catchment , three methods
to determine the mean areal rainfall:
 The arithmetic mean method
 The Thiessen polygon method
 The Isohyetal method

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Arithmetic mean method
 Assumes that each rain gauge represents the average
rainfall that falls around the gauge within the catchment
area.
 P1, P2, … PN are the rainfall data in N stations within the
catchment, mean precipitation, P over the catchment
calculated using arithmetic mean method

P1  P2  ....  PN
P
N

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Thiessen polygon method
 Rainfall recorded at each station is given a weightage on
the basis of an area closest to the station.

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Thiessen polygon method procedure
 Consider the catchment
area in the Figure given.
 There are 3 rain gauge
stations located within the
catchment and another 3
more stations located
outside of the catchment.
 Note: The catchment area is
drawn to scale and the
positions of the 6 stations
are marked on it.

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Thiessen polygon method procedures
 Stations 1 to 6 are joined to
form a network of triangles.
 Draw the perpendicular
bisectors for each of the
sides of the triangle
 These bisectors form a
polygon around each station
 If the boundary of the
catchment cuts the
bisectors, it will be taken as
the outer limit of the
polygon

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Thiessen polygon method procedures
 Station 1: bounding
polygon is abcd
 Station 2: bounding
polygon is kade
 The bounding polygons
are called Thiessen
polygons.
 Areas of the 6 Thiessen
polygons are determined
either by planimeter or by
using overlay grid.

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Thiessen polygon method procedures

Average rainfall over the catchment,

P1 A1  P2 A2  ...  P6 A6
P
 A1  A2  ...  A6 
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Thiessen polygon method procedures
 Thus in general for M number of stations,


M
P Ai Ai
 i 1 Pi
M
P i 1 i
A A
 Where the weightage factor for each station is, Ai
A

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Example 2.2
 Compute the mean areal precipitation for the following
data using the arithmetic mean method and Thiessen
polygon method.

Station Precipitation Area of Thiessen

No (mm) Polygon
(km2)
1 30.8 45
2 34.6 40
3 32.0 30
4 24.6 38

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Solution Example 2.2
 Using arithmetic mean method

P1  P2  ....  PN
P
N
30.8  34.6  32.0  24.6

4
 30.5mm

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Solution Example 2.2
 Using Thiessen Polygon method

P1 A1  P2 A2  P3 A3  P4 A4
P
A1  A2  A3  A4
30.8  45.0  34.6  40.0  32.0  30  24.6  38

153
 30.49mm

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Example 2.3
 The location of six rain gauging stations in or near the
catchment is shown in the figure. The observed rainfall
measured at these stations are given in the table below
together with the Thiessen weighing factors. Determine
the mean areal precipitation of the catchment using the
Thiessen polygon method.

Rain gauge 1 2 3 4 5 6
Rainfall (mm) 45 39 32 34 27 48
Thiessen weight 0.28 0.135 0.275 0.19 0.025 0.095
factor

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Solution for example 2.3

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Solution for example 2.3

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Solution for example 2.3

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Solution for example 2.3

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Solution for example 2.3

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Solution for example 2.3

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Solution for example 2.3

Rain gauge Rainfall, P Polygon area Theissen Weight P xW

(mm) (km2) W (mm)
1 45 Should be 0.280 12.6
determined
2 39 0.135 5.3
from the
3 32 drawn diagram 0.275 8.8
4 34 0.190 6.5
5 27 0.025 0.7
6 48 0.095 4.6
Total 38.5

Mean areal precipitation using Thiessen polygon method is 38.5 mm

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Isohyetal method
 An isohyet is a line joining points of equal rainfall
magnitude.
 Catchment area is drawn to scale and the raingauge
stations are marked.
 The recorded values for which areal average P is to be
determined are then marked on the plot at appropriate
stations.
 Neighbouring stations are also considered.

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Isohyetal method
 Isohyets values are then drawn by considering point
rainfalls as guide and interpolating between them by the
eye.
 Area between the adjacent isohyets is determined by
planimeter.
 If the isohyets go out of catchment, catchment boundary
is used as the boundary line.

 P1  P2   P2  P3   Pn 1  Pn 
a1    a2    ...  an 1  
P 
2   2   2 
A

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Isohyetal method

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Example 2.4
 The isohyets due to the storm in a catchment is shown in
the figure and the area bounded by the isohyets are given
in the table below. Determine the mean and areal
precipitation of the catchment using Isohyetal Method.

Isohyets 12 12-10 10-8 8-6 6-4

(cm)
Area 30 140 80 180 20
(km2)

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Solution for Example 2.4
Isohyets Average Area Fraction of Weighted
precipitation (km2) total area precipitati
(cm) on
(cm)
12.0 12.0 30 0.0667 0.800
12.0 – 10.0 11.0 140 0.3111 0.422
10.0-8.0 9.0 80 0.1778 1.600
8.0-6.0 7.0 180 0.40001 2.800
6.0-4.0 5.0 20 0.0444 0.222
Total 450 1.000 8.844

Mean areal precipitation using Thiessen polygon method is 8.844 mm

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Example 2.5
 Estimate the total volume of rainfall over a catchment
area based on the following observation carried out in
the field.

Station A B C D E
Observed rainfall 265 198 145 114 81
(mm)
Polygon area (ha) 518 770 906 1500 748

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Solution for Example 2.5
Station Rainfall Polygon Area P xA
P (m) A (ha) (ha – m)
A 0.265 518 317.27
B 0.198 770 152.46
C 0.145 906 131.37
D 0.114 1500 171.00
E 0.081 748 60.59
Total 4442 832.69

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Example 2.6
 The isohyets of a particular catchment area together with
the area between two isohyets are given in the table
below. Compute the mean areal precipitation using the
Isohyetal method.
Isohyets 127.0- 139.7- 152.4- 165.1- 177.8- 190.5-
(cm) 139.7 152.4 165.1 177.8 190.54 203.2
Area 181 388 337 311 104 26
(km2)

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Solution for Example 2.6
Mean Precipitation, Area, A P xA
P (km2)
(cm)
133.35 181 24 136
146.05 388 56 667
168.75 337 53 499
: : :
: : :
Total 1347 211 893

Mean areal precipitation = 211 893/1347

=157.3 cm

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 End

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