Temporal scaling characteristics of sub‐daily precipitation in Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

As one of famous hotspots for natural disaster studies on Earth, the Qinghai‐Tibet Plateau (QTP) is highly vulnerable to destructive rainstorm hazard and related natural disasters, causing significant damage to property, infrastructure, agriculture, and resulting in extensive loss of life. Short-duration heavy precipitation at sub‐daily scales is an important trigger for flash flood, debris flows and other disasters in QTP. However, it is a poorly gauged high mountain region, observed data for sub‐daily precipitation is extremely limited. Although there have been several satellite products and reanalysis data for sub‐daily precipitation in QTP, their quality has large bias and uncertainty compared to observations. It leaves a large data gap of sub‐daily precipitation, hindering the studies of rainstorm‐related natural disasters in the region. In this work, we develop a new strategy to quantify the temporal scaling characteristics of sub‐daily precipitation, as a basis of temporal downscaling. Then we use the new strategy to generate a parameters data set, to fill the data gap of sub‐daily precipitation in QTP. The parameters data set generated provides an effective way to estimate sub‐daily precipitation and its uncertainty, which can effectively serve for the rainstorm‐related natural disasters study in QTP.

Recommended citation: Ren, Z., Sang, Y. F., Cui, P., Chen, D., Zhang, Y., Gong, T., Sun, S. & Mellouli, N. (2024). Temporal scaling characteristics of sub‐daily precipitation in Qinghai‐Tibet Plateau. Earth's Future, 12(3), e2024EF004417. DOI:10.1029/2024EF004417
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