Evaluating the streamflow simulation capability of PERSIANN-CDR daily rainfall products in two river basins on the Tibetan Plateau

Abstract

Abstract. On the Tibetan Plateau, the limited groundbased rainfall information owing to a harsh environment has brought great challenges to hydrological studies. Satellitebased rainfall products, which allow for a better coverage than both radar network and rain gauges on the Tibetan Plateau, can be suitable alternatives for studies on investigating the hydrological processes and climate change. In this study, a newly developed daily satellite-based precipitation product, termed Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information Using Artificial Neural Networks -Climate Data Record (PERSIANN-CDR), is used as input for a hydrologic model to simulate streamflow in the upper Yellow and Yangtze River basins on the Tibetan Plateau. The results show that the simulated streamflows using PERSIANN-CDR precipitation and the Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) precipitation are closer to observation than that using limited gauge-based precipitation interpolation in the upper Yangtze River basin. The simulated streamflow using gauge-based precipitation are higher than the streamflow observation during the wet season. In the upper Yellow River basin, gauge-based precipitation, GLDAS precipitation, and PERSIANN-CDR precipitation have similar good performance in simulating streamflow. The evaluation of streamflow simulation capability in this study partly indicates that the PERSIANN-CDR rainfall product has good potential to be a reliable dataset and an alternative information source of a limited gauge network for conducting long-term hydrological and climate studies on the Tibetan Plateau.

Evaluation of Five Satellite-Based Precipitation Products in Two Gauge-Scarce Basins on the Tibetan Plateau

“…Compared with a lumped model, a distributed hydrological model can reflect the influences of spatial variability in precipitation on hydrological simulations and thus is more sensitive to the errors in precipitation inputs than a lumped model [59]. Here, the hydrological evaluation was performed via a grid-based distributed hydrological model, namely, the Hydro-Informatic Modeling System (HIMS) [10,60,61]. The HIMS model is a conceptual, process-based hydrological model that includes key hydrological processes in both the vertical and horizontal directions, including snow accumulation melt, evaporation from soil and plants, infiltration, water exchange between soil layers, and groundwater recharge and baseflow ( Figure 2).…”

“…However, IR-based methods generally fail to capture the shallow snow over snow-covered surfaces, whereas MW-based methods also face challenges detecting solid precipitation since solid precipitation limits possible MW retrievals to use the scattering signal at higher frequencies [45]. Although some evaluations of satellite precipitation products have been conducted over the TP (e.g., Gao and Liu [46]; Tong, et al [30]; Wang, et al [47]; and Liu, et al [10]), many studies have focused only on a single precipitation product (e.g., [10] and [48]), and few studies have combined the two methods (mentioned above) to evaluate the precipitation products. In addition, some promising recently released precipitation products, such as CHRIPS version 2.0, have not been evaluated yet on the TP.…”

Investigating water budget dynamics in 18 river basins across the Tibetan Plateau through multiple datasets

“…Despite the importance of the TP in this geographic region, advances in hydrological and land surface studies in this region have been limited by data scarcity (Zhang et al, 2007;Li et al, 2013;Liu et al, 2017). For instance, less than 80 observation stations (∼ 10 % of a total of ∼ 750 observation station across China) have been established in the TP by the Chinese Meteorological Administration (CMA) since the mid-20th century (Wang and Zeng, 2012).…”

Using Multiple Monthly Water Balance Models to Evaluate Gridded Precipitation Products over Peninsular Spain

“…Nevertheless, the accurate assessment of precipitation is of the utmost importance for hydrological modelling, as it provides meteorological input for hydrological studies. Therefore, reliable and accurate precipitation information at sufficient spatial and temporal resolution is essential not only for the study of climate trends, but also for water resource management [2]. Traditionally, hydrologic simulations are usually based on historical gauge observations that may not models in Australia [27], but, nowadays, it is being used worldwide [28,29], for both humid and dry basins.…”

“…Therefore, the four basins cover a wide range of climatic and physiographic conditions. Thus, the goals of this research can be divided into three stages: (1) To compare and evaluate the robustness and the accuracy of the GPDs with gauged precipitation data in different climatic zones over Peninsular Spain, (2) to assess the performance of four different satellite precipitation products and rain gauge historical information as input into MWBMs for streamflow simulation over Peninsular Spain, and (3) to evaluate the performance of the simulated streamflow of four different GPDs in previously fitted MWBMs with rain gauge datasets. The contents of the paper are structured as follows: The study area and datasets used in this study are introduced in Section 2; the methodology is described in Section 3; Section 4 presents the results and discussion; and Section 5 highlights the main conclusions.…”