Annual Statistics from 5 Years of 1-Minute Rainfall Rate Measurements at a Specific Site in Bolivia

Abstract

1-minute precipitation data is crucial for evaluating the accuracy of rainfall rate prediction methods. In this paper, we present findings after conducting a 5-year rainfall rate measurement campaign at a single site in Bolivia, spanning from September 2018 to August 2023. Additionally, we utilized 6 years of 15-minute rainfall data from a nearby site. The widely-accepted EXCELL RSC model, with slight adjustments to account for the specific geographical characteristics of the study area, was applied to convert rainfall rate cumulative distributions from 15-minutes to 1-minute. The accuracy analysis performed reveals that long-term statistics of rain intensity predicted by the currently adopted version of the ITU-R P.837 model closely match the experimental results. The results indicate that the mean and RMS values of the relative error remain below 10%. This similarity is particularly notable when we incorporate monthly mean local values of surface temperature and rainfall amounts into the ITU-R model.