Assessment of an Alternative Climate Product for Hydrological Modeling: A Case Study of the Danjiang River Basin, China

Abstract

Precipitation has been recognized as the most critical meteorological parameter in hydrological studies. Recent developments in space technology provide cost-effective alternative ground-based observations to simulate the hydrological process. Here, this paper aims to evaluate the performance of satellite-based datasets in the hydrological modeling of a sensitive area in terms of water quality and safety watershed. Three precipitation products, i.e., rain gauge observations (RO), the China Meteorological Assimilation Driving Datasets for the SWAT model (CMADS), and Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission Multi-satellite (TRMM) products, were used to develop the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model to simulate the streamflow in the Danjiang River Basin (DRB). The results show that: (1) these three precipitation products have a similar performance with regard to monthly time scale compared with the daily scale; (2) CMADS and TRMM performed better than RO in the runoff simulations. CMADS is a more accurate dataset when combined with satellite-based and ground-based data; (3) the results indicate that the CMADS dataset provides reliable results on both monthly and daily scales, and CMADS is a possible alternative climate product for developing a SWAT model for the DRB. This study is expected to serve as a reference for choosing the precipitation products for watersheds similar to DRB where the rain gauge data are limited.