AUTHOR=Misra Vasubandhu , Jayasankar C. B. , Beasley Parker , Bhardwaj Amit 

TITLE=Operational Monitoring of the Evolution of Rainy Season Over Florida

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Climate

VOLUME=Volume 4 - 2022

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/climate/articles/10.3389/fclim.2022.793959

DOI=10.3389/fclim.2022.793959

ISSN=2624-9553

ABSTRACT=Florida has a distinct wet season, which serves the annual water needs of the State and beyond. Our earlier studies have indicated that in addition to the seasonal rainfall anomalies, the length of the season marked by the date of onset and retreat of the season also contribute significantly to the variations of the wet season over Florida. Furthermore, the variations of the onset date of the rainy season relate significantly to the seasonal anomalies of length of the season and rainfall. 
In this study, we have used the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA’s) Integrated Multi-Satellite Retrievals for Global Precipitation Mission version 6 (IMERG) rainfall dataset to monitor the rainy season over the five Water Management Districts (WMDs) of Florida for 2021. This effort was complimented by analyzing and verifying the variations of the rainy season over the preceding 20 wet seasons from the IMERG datasets. 
IMERG produces rainfall datasets at various latencies, with the final product having a 3.5-month latency since the satellite measurements of radiance are made. However, in this study we find than an intermediate 12-hour latency product of rainfall analysis from IMERG is reasonable to use for near real time monitoring of the wet season over Florida. 
The operational monitoring of the 2021 wet season using the 12-hour latency dataset from IMERG was also supplemented with the extended weather 6-10 days and 8-14 days forecasts of precipitation probability issued by the NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. Our study suggests that amidst moderate to insignificant weather and climate prediction skill over the wet season of Florida from numerical climate forecast models, the current methodology of monitoring the onset date variations of the rainy season provides a viable alternative to assess and anticipate the seasonal variations.