Revealing the structure of heavy precipitation events: a spatio-temporal wavelet approach

The impact of a heavy precipitation event is determined not only by the total amount of precipitation, but also by its spatial and temporal distribution. This study introduces a framework to quantify key spatiotemporal properties of precipitation events – namely their characteristic time, length and speed – based on radar observations. The method employs a wavelet-based spectral filtering approach to isolate precipitation signals at distinct temporal and spatial scales. Focusing on Germany, we analyse 100 heavy precipitation events from the high-resolution RadKlim dataset. We assess the physical consistency of the derived characteristics and examine their links to large-scale atmospheric dynamics. Our results reveal systematic patterns in the spatiotemporal structure of heavy precipitation events. The proposed framework provides a robust basis for process-oriented analysis and offers potential for improved risk assessment and climate studies.