Precipitation is any form of solid or liquid water that falls from the atmosphere to the earth’s surface.

Examples are rain, drizzle, hail and snow. In Philippines, rain is the most common form of
precipitation.

Evaporation is the loss of water molecules from soil masses and water bodies.
Transpiration is the loss of water from plants in the form of vapour. We proceed on to discuss
precipitation, and its most important component in Philippines context, the rainfall.

Hot air rises because when you heat air (or any other gas for that matter), it expands.
When the air expands, it becomes less dense than the air around it. The less dense
hot air then floats in the more dense cold air much like wood floats on water because
wood is less dense than water. This floating effect in a less dense medium is called
a buoyant force or a displacement force.

Water resources engineering also includes the planning

and management of facilities that are constructed for these tasks like making
canals for irrigation and sewers for drainage and to avoid waterlogging, and
all other issues related with the usage and control of water

From the point of view of water resources engineering, it is essential to

quantify rainfall over space and time and extract necessary analytical
information.

Instruments
The standard instrument for the measurement of rainfall is the 203mm (8 inch) rain gauge. This is
essentially a circular funnel with a diameter of 203mm which collects the rain into a graduated and
calibrated cylinder. The measuring cylinder can record up to 25mm of precipitation. Any excess
precipitation is captured in the outer metal cylinder. The top of the rain gauge is 0.3m above the grou

Observations
Daily rainfall is nominally measured each day at 9am local time. However there are a number of sites
which report 48 or 72 hour totals (or occasionally longer) over weekends if the observer is unable to be
present. These are known as accumulated observations. At the vast majority of rainfall sites
observations are taken by volunteers who send in a monthly record of daily precipitation at the end of
each month. A subset of observers at strategic locations send their observations electronically to the
Bureau each day.

Rainfall has traditionally been measured to the nearest 0.2mm (1 point, or 1/100th of an inch prior to
1970), although in recent years some observations are being reported to 0.1mm. Any moisture less than
this is recorded as a trace.
Measuring your own rainfall
The standard Bureau of Meteorology rain gauge has an opening 203mm in diameter. If a rain gauge
with a large diameter is used in an area which often receives large daily rainfall totals, such as in the
tropics, then the amount of water collected can be inconveniently large. Gauges with too small an
opening may be difficult to read when the rainfall amount is small, are affected more by the wind, and
may become blocked with debris.

Notwithstanding the difference between pan-evaporation and the evapotranspiration of cropped

surfaces, the use of pans to predict ETo for periods of 10 days or longer may be warranted. The pan
evaporation is related to the reference evapotranspiration by an empirically derived pan coefficient:

ETo = Kp Epan
Where
ETo reference evapotranspiration [mm/day],
Kp pan coefficient [-],
Epan pan evaporation [mm/day].
Hydraulic conductivity is a measure of the ability of a fluid to flow
through a porous medium and is determined by the size and shape of
the pore spaces in the medium and their degree of interconnection and
also by the viscosity of the fluid. Hydraulic conductivity can be
expressed as the volume of fluid that will move in unit time under a unit
hydraulic gradient through a unit area measured at right angles to the
direction of flow.