Diurnal cycle of precipitation using high spatial and temporal resolution quantitative precipitation estimates and radar-reflectivity products derived from National Mosaic and Multi-sensor QPE (NMQ/Q2)

Prior studies by our group investigated the diurnal cycle of precipitation in a small domain in the southeast United States. This study expands to use data produced for the Continental United States (CONUS). The radar based QPE that will be used in this investigation have been developed by the National Mosaic and Multi-sensor QPE(NMQ/Q2) algorithm from the National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL) which has been implemented at the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) to produce a long-term radar based QPE in a reanalysis mode. The period of record could possible span from 1998-present. This 13 year data set provides a lot of data for the investigation into the diurnal cycle of precipitation. The NMQ reanalysis product has several variables available; QPE, 2-d reflectivity, and 3-d reflectivity, each of which will be valuable in the study of the diurnal cycle of precipitation. We present the average intensity, peak intensity, and inter-annual variability of the diurnal cycle of precipitation for select regions throughout CONUS. In addition we investigate the impact of resolution on each of these variables. The expansion of this investigation to the CONUS provides several difficulties related to precipitation intensities and variability of the diurnal cycle. Some of these difficulties are related to precipitation regimes like snow, mixed phase, and warm precipitation. Other difficulties are related to the type of storms such as micro-scale, meso-scale storms and synoptic storms. Finally the coverage or lack thereof of the NEXRAD radars will provide difficulties in the investigations of the rain intensities and the variability of the diurnal cycle. We provide results for the most complete data set that will be available.