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Correlation Between Integrated Precipitable Water Vapor and Precipitated Water

During the Heavy Rainfall Event of February 2018 in the Tahiti Island (South
Pacific)

Conference Paper · July 2018

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 2018 ICEO&SI Conference, JULY 1-3, Hsinchu. Taiwan

PAPER No.：

Correlation Between Integrated Precipitable Water Vapor and

Precipitated Water During the Heavy Rainfall Event of
February 2018 in the Tahiti Island (South Pacific)
Fangzhao Zhang1, Peng Feng2, Jean-Pierre Barriot1, Marania Hopuare1, Lydie Sichoix1
1
Geodesy Observatory of Tahiti, University of French Polynesia, 98702 Faa’a, Tahiti, zhaosunshine@163.com, jean-
pierre.barriot@upf.pf, marania.hopuare@upf.pf, lydie.sichoix@upf.pf
2
State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing,
Wuhan University, 430072 Wuhan, China, fengpengwhu@foxmail.com

ABSTRACT
This study focuses on the relationship between Integrated Precipitable Water Vapor (IPWV) estimates from Global
Positioning System (GPS) data and rainfall intensity in the tropical high volcanic Island of Tahiti, during a heavy rainfall
event that persisted for four weeks in February 2018 at the Geodesy Observatory site, in the suburbs of the capital city
(Papeete). During the event, the accumulated precipitation reached 500 mm, corresponding to +173% of the monthly
climatological normal. We investigate in this paper the causal relationship, for this particular event, between rainfall
intensity and IPWV in terms of cross-correlation and a causal convolution operator.

I. INTRODUCTION (2,000 mm/year) [9]. A similar study was done for Big Island
(Hawaii) by Foster et al. [10]. A detailed description of the data
Water vapor is a critical component of the greenhouse gases and methods is presented in Section II. Results and discussion
of the atmosphere, and is a major contributor to global weather are given in Section III. Conclusions are provided in Section IV.
and climate changes [1]. It also plays an important role in
weather forecasting [2]. The rainfall processes and related II. DATA AND METHODS
hazards, like flash-floods and landslides, are directly affected
by the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere [3]. Besides, A. Data Acquisition
water vapor is essential rainfall. Knowledge of the distribution 1) GPS Data: The Geodesy Observatory of Tahiti (OGT)
and temporal variation of atmosphere water vapor is therefore hosts a GPS receiver THTI (IGS reference) that consists of a
very important for better understanding of rainfall [4, 5]. Since TRIMBLE NETR8 receiver with an ASHTECH geodetic
Bevis et al in 1992 [6] first proposed to detect integrated L1/L2 antenna. The zenithal wet delay (ZWD) are estimated by
precipitable water vapor (IPWV, or PW for short) using Global using the hydrostatic VMF1/ECMWF model (VMF1 dry and
Positioning System (GPS) propagation delays, this type of data wet mapping functions) and the precise point positioning (PPP)
acquisition has been widely used to routinely monitor PW with approach under the Bernese GNSS Software 5.2 [11]. The
improved spatial and temporal resolutions w.r.t. the traditional ZWD are converted into PW estimates as follows [12], with a
meteorological techniques based on radiosonde (RS) and water 15 min sampling
vapor radiometer (WVR) observations [7].
PW = Π × ZWD (1)
The objective of this study is to investigate the relationship
between rainfall intensity and PW during a heavy rainfall event where
in Tahiti that occurred from January 29 to February 24, 2018 at
the Geodesy Observatory site, in the suburbs of the capital city 106
Π= (2)
(Papeete), at the core of the wet season. The wet season is 𝑘 ′
𝜌𝑅𝑣 ( 3 + 𝑘2 )
characterized by alternating sunny and rainy days, generated by 𝑇𝑚
the increased convective activity within the South Pacific where  is a conversion coefficient,   1000 kg / m 3 is the density
Convergence Zone [8], or by eastward propagating
perturbations. The rainfall events are often inducing intense of liquid water, R v  461 . 495 J / kg  K is the specific gas
flash-floods and landslides, claiming many lives each year. The constant of water vapor, k 2  22 . 1 K / mb
'
and
spatial rain distribution shows a large contrast between the k 3  3 . 739  10 K
5 2
are physical constants [13]. The
/ mb
northeastern part of Tahiti, wetter and exposed to dominant
trade winds (4,000 mm/year), and the southwestern part, dryer weighted average of the atmospheric temperature T m is a key
and protected from the winds by the large orographic relief parameter in this conversion process. In our case, the Tm model
2018 ICEO&SI Conference, JULY 1-3, Hsinchu. Taiwan
PAPER No.：
used is from Zhang et al. [13] as 𝑇𝑚 = 4.36𝑇𝑠 − 979.71 (wet
season model). The local surface temperature Ts is from an
ancillary temperature sensor collocated with the rain gauge that
acquired our rain data.
2) Rain Gauge Data: The rain gauge station, with a 1
min sampling, is collocated with the GPS station THTI. The
recorded data includes temperature, relative humidity, pressure,
rainfall accumulation and rainfall intensity.
B. Methods
We calculated and analyzed the correlation and convolution
between PW estimates from GPS and rainfall intensity in order
to investigate their relationship.
1) The cross-correlation between PW and Rainfall
Intensity is defined as
+∞
R(T) = ∫ 𝑃𝑊(𝑡 + 𝑇) 𝑅𝑎𝑖𝑛(𝑡)𝑑𝑡 (3)
−∞
Where T is the phase shift, and can be written in a normalized
form as
∑𝑖 𝑃𝑊(𝑡𝑖+𝑗 ) × 𝑅𝑎𝑖𝑛(𝑡𝑖 )
R(j) = (4)
√∑𝑖 𝑃𝑊 2 (𝑡𝑖 ) √𝑅𝑎𝑖𝑛2 (𝑡𝑖 )
where R (j) is the correlation coefficient, with i = 0,1, … , N
and j = 0,1, … , M.
2) We write the causal convolution between PW and
rainfall intensity as
𝑡
Rain(t) = ∫ 𝐾(𝑡 − 𝑧) 𝑃𝑊(𝑧) 𝑑𝑧 (5)
−∞
where K is the causal (i.e. with zero value when z > t)
convolution kernel, or in other words
Rain[i] = ∑ 𝐾(𝑖 − 𝑗) ∗ 𝑃𝑊[𝑗] (6)
𝑗 decrease in PW. Figure 1-b shows that there is only a weak
with i = 0,1, … , N and j = 0,1, … , M. A similar approach can
be found in [14].
By using a causal kernel, we assume that the PW is the
ultimate source of rain. Albeit that is indisputably true, the rain
is also a source of PW through evaporation and
evapotranspiration by the plants [15]. In other words, Eq. (3) is
relative to the whole loop of water between the surface and the
atmosphere (rain and evaporation/evapotranspiration), and Eq.
(5) only focus on the rain process. We have also to stress that
the path from PW to rain is a complicated one, where the
nucleation of excess water vapor into cloud droplets is induced
by external agents like aerosols (saline aerosols in our case
[16]), and/or even cosmic rays [17]. Besides, clouds can be
transported by winds over large distances, and it is safer to say
that Eq. (5) only codes a partial causality between PW and
rain.
An additional difficulty, in both the cross-correlation and
the convolution modeling is that the spectral contents of the
time series of the rain and of the PW are quite different. The
rain records are basically a series of “spikes”, and the PW
records are much smoother (see Fig. 1-a). Besides, to have a
rainfall event implies that the PW must reach a threshold (the
rain is not a continuous function of the PW), which has also to
be determined in some way from Eq. (5). We introduce this
threshold 𝜉 as
𝑡
Rain(t) = ∫ 𝐾(𝑡 − 𝑧) (𝑃𝑊(𝑧) − 𝜉) 𝑑𝑧 (7)
−∞
We will estimate both a discretized form (with a one min
sampling) of the kernel K and the threshold 𝜉 through a non-
linear least-squares fit (as K and 𝜉 are multiplicative) from the
rain data [18].
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
A heavy rainfall event occurred in Tahiti, French Polynesia,
during four weeks in February 2018. The precipitation totals
exceeded 500 mm at the Geodesy Observatory of Tahiti (OGT)
site located at 100 m altitude ( 149°25′ W, 17°40′S ).
Simultaneously, a large accumulated rainfall of 572 mm was
confirmed at the Faa’a Airport station at near sea level altitude
operated by Météo-France Weather Centre (about 1.6 km to the
north of OGT).
A. Correlation of PW with Rainfall Intensity
Fig. 1-a depicts, for this heavy rainfall event, the PW time
series (with a 1 min linear sub-interpolation) and the variations
of rainfall intensity. During this event, the PW values were
larger (up to 75 mm) than usual (around 50 mm). The rain
began with the first increase in PW and ended with a sharp
correlation between the humidity on the ground level and the
PW. Fig. 2-a shows the evolution of the correlation coefficient
R is as a function of the phase shift T. One can see clearly in
Fig. 2-b a phase shift of 16 min between PW and rain data,
indicating that, in the mean, the rain starts 16 min after a
maximum of PW. Another “bump” can be seen on the right of
the curve in Fig. 2-a at a phase shift of 6 hours, probably
related to the evapotranspiration process that is feeding up the
PW. Serafini et al. [9] found that a phase shift of half-an-hour
between the PW and rain for Tahiti Island over eight-year
period. The difference with our value is probably due to three
factors: the rain gauge was not collocated with the GPS
receiver (7 km distance); they did not separate the wet and dry
seasons; and of course their study spanned eight years of data.
2018 ICEO&SI Conference, JULY 1-3, Hsinchu. Taiwan

PAPER No.：

(a) (b)

Figure 1. (a) Time series in February 2018 of 1/ estimates of PW based on the wet season Tm model with 1 min linear interpolation (blue dots) and 2/ collocated
rain intensity (red dots), and (b) Relationship between PW and ground relative humidity (the humidity sensor seems to saturate for values higher than 94 %).

(a)

(b)

Figure 2. (a) Evolution of linear correlation coefficient R as a function of the phase shift T (Eq. (4)) between the time series of PW and collocated rain intensity,
and ((b) partial enlargement of (a)): the phase shift between the time series of PW and rain intensity is 16 min (red line). One can also see, in the right part of sub-
Fig. (a) a "bump" at around 6 h of phase shift that is probably related to the evapotranspiration processes occurring after a rain event.

B. Convolution of PW with Rainfall Intensity

To model the causal relationship between the PW and the
rain is a challenge, as their frequency contents are very
different. To overcome this difficulty, we used an inverse
problem approach, with a regularization done by only
considering the statistically meaningful singular values of the
kernel K [18]. The reconstructed kernel is shown in Figure 3-a,
with a maximum occurring at 29 min. We adjusted (Fig 3-b)
the threshold value 𝜉 by fitting “by eye” the recorded rain (in
red), to the reconstructed rain (in green), as we noticed that the
variation of 𝜉 was basically inducing a shift of the
reconstructed rain in the vertical direction. We found a “best”
value of 48.2 mm for 𝜉 . In their study about a storm over Big
Island, Foster et al. found a value of 53 mm (figure 7 of
reference [10]), but their orographic context is very different.
We stress again, the cross-correlation phase shift of 16 min
and the convolution maximum occurring at 29 min does not
represent the same physical meaning. The first one integrates
the whole “water loop” in the atmosphere, and the second one
isolates the causal relationship between the PW maxima and
the rainfall events.
2018 ICEO&SI Conference, JULY 1-3, Hsinchu. Taiwan
PAPER No.：
(a)
Figure 3. (a) Evolution of convolution kernel (Eq. 6) between PW and rain intensity, with a maximum occurring at 29 min (red line), and (b) Time series in
February 2018 of rain intensity from rain gauge (red dots) and reconstructed rain intensity (green line), that is closely an image of PW (see Figure1-a).
IV. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, we have analyzed and compared the
relationship between PW and rainfall intensity during a heavy
rainfall event of February 2018 in the island of Tahiti (South
Pacific). We demonstrated that this relationship can be
characterized, in the mean, by three numbers: a phase shift of
16 min, characterizing the whole “water loop” in the
atmosphere, a causal 29 min delays between the maxima of the
PW and the rainfall events, and a threshold of 48.2 mm for the
PW to induce rain. This study provides further evidence that
the PW estimates derived from GPS data can be assimilated in
rain forecasting and global climate change models.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This research was funded by the French Space Agency
(CNES) and the University of French Polynesia (UPF).
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