Hourly rainfall data from rain gauge networks and weather radar up to 2020 across the Hawaiian Islands

With increasing needs for understanding historic climatic events and assessing changes in extreme weather to support natural hazard planning and infrastructure design, it is vital to have an accurate long-term hourly rainfall dataset. In Hawai'i, annual, monthly, and daily gauge data have been well-compiled and are accessible. Here, we compiled hourly rainfall data from both gauges and radars. We arranged the metadata from various data sources, acquired data, and applied quality control to each gauge dataset. In addition, we compiled and provided hourly radar rainfall, and filtered out areas with low confidence (larger error). This paper provides (1) a summary of available hourly data from various observation networks, (2) 293-gauge rainfall data from their installation date to the end of 2020, and (3) a 5-year 0.005 degrees by 0.005 degrees (similar to 250 x 250 m(2)) gridded radar rainfall dataset between 2016 and 2020 across the Hawaiian Islands.

Automated summary

This study compiled hourly rainfall data in Hawai'i from gauges and radars, providing a reliable dataset for understanding historic climatic events and assessing changes in extreme weather. The research is valuable for natural hazard planning and infrastructure design.