Abstract
The measuring stations of a geophysical network are often spatially distributed in an inhomogeneous manner. The areal inhomogeneity can be well characterized by the fractal dimension D H of the network, which is usually smaller than the euclidean dimension of the surface, this latter equal to 2. The resulting dimensional deficit, (2 − D H ), is a measure of precipitating events which cannot be detected by the network. The aim of the present study is to estimate the fractal dimension of a rain-gauge network in Tuscany (Central Italy) and to relate its dimension to the dimensions of daily rainfall events detected by a mixed satellite/radar methodology. We find that D H ≃ 1.85, while typical summer precipitations are characterized by a dimension much greater than the dimensional deficit 0.15.
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Acknowledgements
MSG imagery is copyright of EUMETSAT and was made available by the EUMETSAT on-line Archive. We thank National Department of Civil Protection (DPCN) for providing weather radar data. The authors are grateful to Andrea Antonini and Stefano Romanelli for preprocessing and providing remote sensed data. In addition special thanks go to Melissa Morris for the revision of the text. Partial financial support by Regione Toscana is gratefully acknowledged.
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Capecchi, V., Crisci, A., Melani, S. et al. Fractal characterization of rain-gauge networks and precipitations: an application in Central Italy. Theor Appl Climatol 107, 541–546 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-011-0503-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-011-0503-z