Few people have rain gauges in their backyards, and fewer still are able to accurately predict when a flood will threaten their homes and businesses. For those reasons and more, NASA, the Iowa Flood Center, and other researchers are collaborating in a field campaign to measure rain and precipitation from rain gauges on the ground, advanced weather radars, and satellites.

Called the Iowa Flood Studies (IFloodS), the purpose of the May through June 2013 campaign is to improve our ability to estimate rainfall and forecast flooding from remote sensing data. Iowa precipitation data are collected by a variety of instruments, including a radar network and a series of rain gauges placed in the Cedar and Iowa River basins, along the South Fork of the Iowa River, and in the Turkey River basin. The IFloodS campaign is providing critical information in support of NASA’s 2014 Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) project, which will set a new standard for global precipitation measurements from space.

For more about the Iowa Flood Center, IFloodS and GPM, see: iowafloodcenter.org/.