Rainfall estimation using raingages and radar - a Bayesian approach. I: Derivation of estimators (Q806882)

Procedures for estimating rainfall from radar and raingage observations are constructed in a Bayesian framework. Given that the number of raingage measurements is typically very small, mean and variance of gage rainfall are treated as uncertain parameters. Under the assumption that log gage rainfall and log radar rainfall are jointly multivariate normal, the estimation problem is equivalent to lognormal co-kriging with uncertain mean and variance of the gage rainfall field. The posterior distribution is obtained under the assumption that the prior for the mean and inverse of the variance of log gage rainfall is normal-gamma 2. Estimate and estimation variance do not have closed-form expressions, but can be easily numerically evaluated.