A multiplier-based method of generating stochastic areal rainfall from point rainfalls

Abstract

Catchment modelling for water resources assessment is still mainly based on rain gauge measurements as these are more easily available and cover longer periods than radar and satellite-based measurements. Rain gauges however measure the rain falling on an extremely small proportion of the catchment and the areal rainfall obtained from these point measurements are consequently substantially uncertain. These uncertainties in areal rainfall estimation are generally ignored and the need to assess their impact on catchment modelling and water resources assessment is therefore imperative. A method that stochastically generates daily areal rainfall from point rainfall using multiplicative perturbations as a means of dealing with these uncertainties is developed and tested on the Berg catchment in the Western Cape of South Africa. The differences in areal rainfall obtained by alternately omitting some of the rain gauges are used to obtain a population of plausible multiplicative perturbations. Upper bounds on the applicable perturbations are set to prevent the generation of unrealistically large rainfall and to obtain unbiased stochastic rainfall. The perturbations within the set bounds are then fitted into probability density functions to stochastically generate the perturbations to impose on areal rainfall. By using 100 randomly-initialized calibrations of the AWBM catchment model and Sequent Peak Analysis, the effects of incorporating areal rainfall uncertainties on storage-yield-reliability analysis are assessed. Incorporating rainfall uncertainty is found to reduce the required storage by up to 20%. Rainfall uncertainty also increases flow-duration variability considerably and reduces the median flow-duration values by an average of about 20%.