Exploration of Rain Gauge Quality Issues in Northern England

Abstract

The rain gauge, which is the preferred device for rain rate quantification, is susceptible to various types of errors. The problems of inconsistency and incompletion of rainfall time-series, in addition to data quality issues obstruct hydrometeorological analysis. Daily rainfall data from 30 gauges in Northern England were quality controlled by a double quality check procedure for the period 2006–2014 to solve any specific data quality issues. It emerged that fault readings happened only over a few days compared with the high percentage of missing data which could reach years. Thus, factors that impact gauges’ missing data were inspected. It was found that snowfalls, land cover-land use and bird distribution are the dominant factors that malfunctioning the rain gauge for long time periods, often producing successive missing days that could be extended months in total. However, when the missing data happened on separate days, then it seemed that high winds related with light rainfall resulted in drifting away the rainfall from the rain gauge and thus caused missing data. Moreover, the rainfall itself was not one of the major factors to malfunction the gauge, because the values of missed rainfall were not quite extreme to do this.