You are here:
Demonstration of an online web services tool incorporating automatic retrieval and comparison of precipitation data
Citation:
Sitterson, J., S. Sinnathamby, R. Parmar, J. Koblich, K. Wolfe, AND C. Knightes. Demonstration of an online web services tool incorporating automatic retrieval and comparison of precipitation data. ENVIRONMENTAL MODELLING & SOFTWARE. Elsevier Science, New York, NY, 123:104570, (2020). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2019.104570
Impact/Purpose:
Highlights • Automated retrieval and evaluation of precipitation data are facilitated through web services. • HMS-PCAT is publicly available by browser and does not require any technical or programming skills. • Differences and statistical comparisons between precipitation datasets are shown on the webpage. • Demonstration of the tool in a nationwide comparison of 17 climatic regions of the US.
Description:
Input data acquisition and preprocessing is time-consuming and difficult to handle and can have major implications on environmental modeling results. US EPA's Hydrological Micro Services Precipitation Comparison and Analysis Tool (HMS-PCAT) provides a publicly available tool to accomplish this critical task. We present HMS-PCAT's software design and its use in gathering, preprocessing, and evaluating precipitation data through web services. This tool simplifies catchment and point-based data retrieval by automating temporal and spatial aggregations. In a demonstration of the tool, four gridded precipitation datasets (NLDAS, GLDAS, DAYMET, PRISM) and one set of gauge data (NCEI) were retrieved for 17 regions in the United States and evaluated on 1) how well each dataset captured extreme events and 2) how datasets varied by region. HMS-PCAT facilitates data visualizations, comparisons, and statistics by showing the variability between datasets and allows users to explore the data when selecting precipitation datasets for an environmental modeling application.
URLs/Downloads:
DOI: Demonstration of an online web services tool incorporating automatic retrieval and comparison of precipitation data