HRC staff made an oral video presentation at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting 2021.  HRC’s presentation was on 13 December 2021, the first day of the meeting.  The presentation was made by Dr. Konstantine Georgakakos, Dr. Theresa Modrick Hansen, and Mr. Cristopher Spencer.  The title of the paper is Operational Microwave-Adjusted Hydro-Estimator to Support Flash Flood Assessments Worldwide.  Below is the abstract of the paper.  The video presentation can be accessed at: AGU 2021 Fall Meeting, Paper No. H13H-01

Operational Microwave-Adjusted Hydro-Estimator to support Flash Flood Assessments Worldwide

Konstantine P Georgakakos, Theresa M. Modrick and Cristopher R. Spencer

To support the deployment of an operational system for flash-flood assessment worldwide,
precipitation forcing from satellite sensors with high spatio-temporal resolution and low latency is
necessary. In this presentation we discuss the merging of the infrared-based NESDIS operational
global Hydro-Estimator with the microwave/infrared-based CMORPH precipitation estimates on
hourly scales and in real time, to feed the Flash Flood Guidance System with global coverage. The
latter system, whose implementation is facilitated by a partnership among the World
Meteorological Organization, USAID/Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, NOAA, and Hydrologic
Research Center enables forecasters to make assessments pertaining to the occurrence of flash floods in small basins (of area several tens of square kilometers) that tile their country’s domain.

At present the system is serving more than 60 countries worldwide. The presentation will further
discuss the operational climatological bias adjustment of the satellite-based
precipitation estimates with precipitation from ground-based gauges, and will provide error
measures in diverse regions worldwide.