Comparing Rain-Gauge Data with Radar-Derived Precipitation Estimates
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- pedagogical effectiveness
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Following the panel meetings, the conveners wrote summaries of the panel discussion for each resource; these were transmitted to the creator, along with anonymous versions of the reviews. Relatively few resources were accepted as is. In most cases, the majority of the resources were either designated as 1) Reject or 2) Accept with major revisions. Resources were most often rejected for their lack of completeness to be used in a classroom or they contained scientific inaccuracies.
This page first made public: Mar 25, 2004
This material is replicated on a number of sites as part of the SERC Pedagogic Service Project
Summary
Learning Goals
Knowledge
- Need to ground-truth remote observations
- Challenges of obtaining accurate field data
- Local variation in precipitation (esp. in mountainous terrain)
Skills
- quantitative skills
- using GIS
- field observations
Context for Use
Teaching Materials
A detailed lesson plan for Comparisons of NEXRAD radar and precipitation gauge values (more info) is provided by the authors.
This project cost the authors $500 to cover:
- Rain gauges and posts to mount them on
- NEXRAD data, which (in the U.S.) can be ordered through
- Weather Tap (more info)
- Radar Resources (more info) from the National Climate Data Center
- Field data travel expenses
Teaching Notes and Tips
Assessment
References and Resources
This project was designed as part of the Burd Run Interdisciplinary Watershed Research Laboratory (more info)
This exercise is described in Woltemade, C.J. and Stanitsky-Martin, D. 2002. A student-centered field project comparing NEXRAD and rain gauge precipitation values in mountainous terrain. Journal of Geoscience Education 50(3): 296-302.
