A case of severe flood over Albania: a rainfall analysis from a satellite perspective

摘要

This paper presents results of daily rainfall estimates for the flood eventin Albania occurred during the end of September 2002 (from the 21 until the23). Estimated precipitations based on Meteosat-7 data and computed usingvarious techniques, are compared with surface based observations. The twotechniques, developed for convective clouds, were employed to screen theAlbanian Flood. On one hand a single Infrared band technique known asAuto-estimator and on the other hand a three-channel Convective RainfallRate technique known as CRR. Secondly, for both methods, a number ofcorrections, such as, moisture, cloud growth rate, cloud top temperaturegradient, parallax and orographic corrections were, also, performed andtested during the flood case. Preliminary results show that auto-estimatorover-measure significantly daily rainfall with respect to the observed whileCRR gives much closer rain quantities. The Auto-estimator power law curvewas adjusted to the specific conditions using all the available rain rategauge measurements. Satellite daily rainfall estimated by the two methods,corrected and calibrated were finally evaluated using the Albanian raingauge network as ground true.