The monitoring of wildfire smoke is important to help mitigate impacts on people such as by sending early warnings to affected areas. Received signal levels (RSLs) from radio links have been used as an opportunistic way to accurately measure rainfall and humidity. Radio links provide integrated measurements along their paths and are an exceptional untapped resource to complement air quality stations in areas affected by smoke events, or in developing countries without air quality monitoring capability. This study analyzed radio link signal fluctuations during smoke events associated with the 2019–2020 Australian wildfires. Concurrently, the atmospheric boundary layer was characterized using atmospheric soundings and surface observations, as well as air quality proxies such as particulate matter concentrations less than 2.5 μm (10 μm), or PM2.5 (PM10). Observations showed that dry air containing large amounts of smoke within a surface layer above the ground acted as a lid, reducing dispersion, trapping and maintaining high ground-level concentrations of smoke. These conditions also created anomalous propagation conditions for radio links and operational weather radars. Power-law relations between signal fluctuations and PM10 and PM2.5 were derived based on the link data collected and the closest air quality station observations. While there was variability in retrieval performance across smoke events, the best performance determination coefficients exceeded 0.5, with an RMSE on the order of less than 50 μg m−3 for concentrations of more than 400 μg m−3. Mid-range link lengths (5–20 km) provided the best results.@en

The biophysical processes occurring in the unsaturated zone have a direct impact on the water table dynamics. Representing these processes through the application of unsaturated zone models of different complexity has an impact on the estimates of the volumes of water flowing between the unsaturated zone and the aquifer. These fluxes, known as net recharge, are often used as the shared variable that couples unsaturated to groundwater models. However, as recharge estimates are always affected by a degree of uncertainty, model-data fusion methods, such as data assimilation, can be used to inform these coupled models and reduce uncertainty. This study assesses the effect of unsaturated zone models complexity (conceptual versus physically based) to update groundwater model outputs, through the assimilation of actual evapotranspiration rates, for a water-limited site in South Australia. Actual evapotranspiration rates are assimilated because they have been shown to be related to the water table dynamics and thus form the link between remote sensing data and the deeper parts of the soil profile. Results have been quantified using standard metrics, such as the root mean square error and Pearson correlation coefficient, and reinforced by calculating the continuous ranked probability score, which is specifically designed to determine a more representative error in stochastic models. It has been found that, once properly calibrated to reproduce the actual evapotranspiration-water table dynamics, a simple conceptual model may be sufficient for this purpose; thus using one configuration over the other should be motivated by the specific purpose of the simulation and the information available./p.

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This study presents the first evaluation of using commercial microwave link (CML) data for rainfall measurements in Australia, with the test site being the greater Melbourne Metropolitan area. More than 100 CMLs with microwave frequency ranging between 10 and 40 GHz have been used for the rainfall retrieval. The 15-minute received signal levels (RSLs) for each CML based on two sampling strategies (average and minimum/maximum) collected for 2 years provided a unique dataset to compare performances of rainfall retrievals. The open source algorithm RAINLINK was used for deriving rainfall from the 15-minute RSL data. From two years of data, a subset of 30 rainy days distributed across this period were used for calibrating the RAINLINK parameters, with the remaining data used for validation. For this study, only path-averaged rainfall intensities were validated based on a gauge-adjusted radar product serving as the reference. The result of the wet-dry classification showed that the minimum and maximum RSL data performed better, with lower probability of false detection and higher Matthews correlation coefficient than average RSL data. For the rainfall retrieval, both datasets showed similar correlation with the gauge adjusted radar product. However, based on other statistics (RMSE, bias and CV) minimum and maximum RSL data outperformed average for the rainfall retrieval. Overall, this study highlights the robust accuracy of commercial microwave links for rainfall retrieval while using only minimum and maximum RSL data.

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Commercial microwave links (CMLs) have proven useful for providing rainfall information close to the ground surface. However, large uncertainties are associated with these retrievals, partly due to challenges in the type of data collection and processing. In particular, the most common case is when only minimum and maximum received signal levels (RSLs) over a given time interval (hereafter 15 min) are stored by mobile network operators. The average attenuation and the corresponding rainfall rate are then calculated based on a weighted average method using the minimum and maximum attenuation. In this study, an alternative to using a constant weighted average method is explored, based on a machine learning model trained to produce actual attenuation from minimum/maximum values. A rainfall retrieval deep learning model was designed based on a long short-term memory (LSTM) model architecture and trained with disdrometer data in a form that is comparable to the data provided by mobile network operators. A first evaluation used only disdrometer data to mimic both attenuation from a CML and corresponding rainfall rates. For the test data set, the relative bias was reduced from 5.99% to 2.84% and the coefficient of determination (R²) increased from 0.86 to 0.97. The second evaluation used this disdrometer-trained LSTM to retrieve rainfall rates from an actual CML located nearby the disdrometer. A significant improvement in the overall rainfall estimation compared to existing microwave link attenuation models was observed. The relative bias reduced from 7.39% to −1.14% and the R² improved from 0.71 to 0.82.

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Knowledge of the full rainfall drop size distribution (DSD) is critical for characterising liquid water precipitation for applications such as rainfall retrievals using electromagnetic signals and atmospheric model parameterisation. Southern Hemisphere temperate latitudes have a lack of DSD observations and their integrated variables. Laserbased disdrometers rely on the attenuation of a beam by falling particles and are currently the most commonly used type of instrument to observe the DSD. However, there remain questions on the accuracy and variability in the DSDs measured by co-located instruments, whether identical models, different models or from different manufacturers. In this study, raw and processed DSD observations obtained from two of the most commonly deployed laser disdrometers, namely the Parsivel1 from OTT and the Laser Precipitation Monitor (LPM) from Thies Clima, are analysed and compared. Four co-located instruments of each type were deployed over 3 years from 2014 to 2017 in the proximity of Melbourne, a region prone to coastal rainfall in south-eastern Australia. This dataset includes a total of approximately 1.5 million recorded minutes, including over 40 000 min of quality rainfall data common to all instruments, equivalent to a cumulative amount of rainfall ranging from 1093 to 1244mm (depending on the instrument records) for a total of 318 rainfall events. Most of the events lasted between 20 and 40 min for rainfall amounts of 0.12 to 26.0 mm. The colocated LPM sensors show very similar observations, while the co-located Parsivel1 systems show significantly different results. The LPM recorded 1 to 2 orders of magnitude more smaller droplets for drop diameters below 0.6mm compared to the Parsivel1, with differences increasing at higher rainfall rates. The LPM integrated variables showed systematically lower values compared to the Parsivel1. Radar reflectivity- rainfall rate (ZH-R) relationships and resulting potential errors are also presented. Specific ZH-R relations for drizzle and convective rainfall are also derived based on DSD collected for each instrument type. Variability of the DSD as observed by co-located instruments of the same manufacturer had little impact on the estimated ZH-R relationships for stratiform rainfall, but differs when considering convective rainfall relations or ZH-R relations fitted to all available data. Conversely, disdrometer-derived ZH-R relations as compared to the Marshall-Palmer relation ZH D 200R1:6 led to a bias in rainfall rates for reflectivities of 50 dBZ of up to 21.6mmh1. This study provides an open-source high-resolution dataset of co-located DSD to further explore sampling effects at the micro scale, along with rainfall microstructure.

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The objective of this study is to assess the validity of a theoretical expression for the outflow from an initially dry aquifer subject to recharge. This equation states that, for small values of time, this outflow is proportional to the square root of time. Here we report on experiments performed with two laboratory hillslopes in the Wageningen rainfall simulator. Three different aquifer slopes were investigated with four replicates for each slope. The relations between the measured outflows and the square root of time exhibited very high coefficients of determination (all but one >0.9). The aquifer saturated hydraulic conductivity (k) and drainable porosity were determined using a base flow recession analysis, with k being consistent with soil physical laboratory measurements. The recharge rates obtained using the coefficient of the short-time expression and the steady state discharge were consistent as well. Overall, these results confirm the theoretical relationship between the aquifer outflow for the hydrograph rising limb and the square root of time.

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The diversity in hydrologic models has historically led to great controversy on the "correct" approach to process-based hydrologic modeling, with debates centered on the adequacy of process parameterizations, data limitations and uncertainty, and computational constraints on model analysis. In this paper, we revisit key modeling challenges on requirements to (1) define suitable model equations, (2) define adequate model parameters, and (3) cope with limitations in computing power. We outline the historical modeling challenges, provide examples of modeling advances that address these challenges, and define outstanding research needs. We illustrate how modeling advances have been made by groups using models of different type and complexity, and we argue for the need to more effectively use our diversity of modeling approaches in order to advance our collective quest for physically realistic hydrologic models.

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Based on a literature overview, this paper summarizes the impact and legacy of the contributions of Wilfried Brutsaert and Jean-Yves Parlange (Cornell University) with respect to the current state-of-the-art understanding in hydraulic groundwater theory. Forming the basis of many applications in catchment hydrology, ranging from drought flow analysis to surface water-groundwater interactions, hydraulic groundwater theory simplifies the description of water flow in unconfined riparian and perched aquifers through assumptions attributed to Dupuit and Forchheimer. Boussinesq (1877) derived a general equation to study flow dynamics of unconfined aquifers in uniformly sloping hillslopes, resulting in a remarkably accurate and applicable family of results, though often challenging to solve due to its nonlinear form. Under certain conditions, the Boussinesq equation can be solved analytically allowing compact representation of soil and geomorphological controls on unconfined aquifer storage and release dynamics. The Boussinesq equation has been extended to account for flow divergence/convergence as well as for nonuniform bedrock slope (concave/convex). The extended Boussinesq equation has been favorably compared to numerical solutions of the three-dimensional Richards equation, confirming its validity under certain geometric conditions. Analytical solutions of the linearized original and extended Boussinesq equations led to the formulation of similarity indices for baseflow recession analysis, including scaling rules, to predict the moments of baseflow response. Validation of theoretical recession parameters on real-world streamflow data is complicated due to limited measurement accuracy, changing boundary conditions, and the strong coupling between the saturated aquifer with the overlying unsaturated zone. However, recent advances are shown to have mitigated several of these issues. The extended Boussinesq equation has been successfully applied to represent baseflow dynamics in catchment-scale hydrological models, and it is currently considered to represent lateral redistribution of groundwater in land surface schemes applied in global circulation models. From the review, it is clear that Wilfried Brutsaert and Jean-Yves Parlange stimulated a body of research that has led to several fundamental discoveries and practical applications with important contributions in hydrological modeling.

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