SATIN–Satellite driven nowcasting system

Abstract. A precipitation nowcasting system (SATIN) is presented which relies entirely on satellite based precipitation products and rain gauge measurements. Thus, the proposed system is most suitable for areas where ground based radar observations are not available, or potentially suffer from low quality. SATIN delivers analyses on a 1 km grid every 15 min and nowcasts (obtained through motion vectors) in 15 min time steps. Nowcasts are gradually merged with NWP precipitation forecasts. An extensive validation including comparisons to different NWP models yields superior performance for SATIN analyses as well as nowcasts for lead times up to 1 h. Reducing the station density still yields better performance than operationally available NWP's.