A 2-minute rainfall (12 locations) and discharge time series at the Vallon de Nant catchment, Switzerland, for 2018 summer seasons

The data set contains rainfall time series within the experimental 13.4 km² Vallon de Nant catchment, Switzerland (Michelon et al., 2020), from June 30th to September 23rd 2018 at 12 locations. A network of Pluvimate drop-counting raingauges (www.driptych.com) measured continuously the rainfall intensity at a 2-minute resolution. Operation and characteristics of the raingauges are detailed in Benoit et al. (2018) and Michelon et al. (2020), and the rating curve is described by Ceperley et al. (2018).

Description of the files:

data.csv contain the rainfall intensities for the observation period, along with the main river discharge measured at the outlet over the same 2-minutes time step as the rainfall intensity. We also provide areal rainfall intensity aggregated over the whole catchment:
Columns:

year [-]

month [-]

day [-]

hour [-]

minute [-]

specific discharge 95% inf. [mm/day]: inferior values of the specific discharge (with 95% of confidence interval) over 2 minutes

specific discharge 95% sup. [mm/day]: superior values of the specific discharge (with 95% of confidence interval) over 2 minutes

specific discharge mean [mm/day]: mean value of the specific discharge over 2 minutes

specific discharge median [mm/day]: median value of the specific discharge over 2 minutes

P St. #X [mm]: rainfall amount measured at the station X over 2 minutes

P stochastic mean [mm/h]: rainfall amount interpolated over the whole catchment over 2 minutes

P stochastic std [mm/h]: standard deviation of the stochastic rainfall interpolation, over 2 minutes

stations.csv describes the raingauge locations.
Columns:

Station ID [-]

lon [WGS84]: decimal longitude of the station into WGS84

lat [WGS84]: decimal latitude of the station into WGS84

E [CH1903]: east coordinate into Swiss Coordinate System

N [CH1903]: north coordinate into Swiss Coordinate System

elevation [m asl]: altitude of the station in meters above the sea level

data in 2017 [-]: flag if the station was working over the 2017 observation period

data in 2018 [-]: flag if the station was working over the 2018 observation period

rainfall_viewer.m is a MatLab script (created with MatLab 2017b) which allows the joint visualization of the rainfall intensities and river discharge. It produces a composite figure with the following plots:

On top the general hydrograph over the whole observation period [mm/day]. The red dashed lines mark out period that the other plots are focus on. The shaded orange areas correspond to when the river stage data was not available.

Below, the zoomed hydrogram show a detailed view of the river discharge (and uncertainty). In case a river reaction is associated, the discharge event is marked out by red dashed lines. Between these vertical lines is drawn a line joining the initial and final baseflow, separating the discharge amount fed by the baseflow (under the line) to the fast runoff (over the line). The red square shows the center of mass of the fast runoff part.

In the middle a zoomed magnification of the hydrograph that shows a detailed view of the discharge in the river [mm/day]. When a river response is associated, the discharge event is marked with dashed red lines. Between these vertical lines a line joining the initial and final baseflow is drawn, separating the discharge amount fed by the baseflow (under the line) to the fast runoff (over the line). The red square shows the center of mass of the fast runoff.

At the bottom are shown the rainfall recorded by each of the 12 rain gauges (the y-axis scale between 2 stations is about 20 mm/h). The rainfall event is marked out by green dashed lines.

Above is shown the rainfall amount (and uncertainty) interpolated over the catchment using the stochastic method. The rainfall event is marked out by green dashed lines.

On the left, a map with the 12 raingauge locations show the total amount of rainfall recorded by each station during the event (a red cross shows missing data).

It is possible to zoom in the plots by clicking with the left and right mouse buttons to define respectively the starting and ending of the visualization window. The middle button defines a third time reference used to identify rainfall intensity peaks or discharge peaks. Statistics concerning the visualization period are displayed on the MatLab console.
Pressing [enter] will save the figure into a PNG file named with the starting and ending dates of the visualization window.

Q_stats.m is a MatLab function used by the main code rainfall_viewer.m

print_figure.m is a MatLab function used by the main code rainfall_viewer.m

data.mat is a MatLab data file with all data required by the main code rainfall_viewer.m