MONITORING OF EXTREME RAIN AND SNOW EVENTS FROM SATELLITE REMOTE SENSING OBSERVATIONS

Extreme hydrometerological events triggered by heavy rain and/or snowfall are becoming more common as heavy precipitation combined with expanding populations and development aggravate already vulnerable areas. Space-based monitoring is especially valuable in regions where ground-based weather stations are not available or unreliable, where extreme meteorological events frequently contribute to significant social and economic losses. Most current meteorological satellite instruments collect observations which are used to estimate geophysical parameters of rain and snow. Optically-based sensors on board geostationary weather satellites collect measurements at a high spatial and temporal resolution that are ideal for tracking rapidly evolving weather systems. Microwave-based sensors on board the polar orbiting satellites, on the other hand, provide less frequent measurements and at a coarser spatial resolution, but these measurements are more physically related to precipitating cloud properties. For snow cover monitoring, microwave measurements at specific frequencies penetrate clouds and thus are capable of monitoring snow on the ground in near all-weather conditions. This study demonstrates the utility of NOAA/NESDIS’s high resolution satellite rainfall product called Hydro- Estimator (HE) and multi-sensor snow mapping product called Interactive Multi Sensor Snow and Ice Mapping (IMS) System for the monitoring of rainfall and snow cover associated with hydrometeorological disasters. An application of HE and IMS products for the monitoring of rainfall and snow that led to a major disaster flooding event in Albania is presented.