Evaluation of global fine-resolution precipitation products and their uncertainty quantification in ensemble discharge simulations

W Qi,G Fu,C Sweetapple,C Zhang,H Zhou

doi:10.5194/hess-20-903-2016

W Qi, G Fu + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-20-903-2016

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Abstract

Abstract. The applicability of six fine-resolution precipitation products, including precipitation radar, infrared, microwave and gauge-based products, using different precipitation computation recipes, is evaluated using statistical and hydrological methods in northeastern China. In addition, a framework quantifying uncertainty contributions of precipitation products, hydrological models, and their interactions to uncertainties in ensemble discharges is proposed. The investigated precipitation products are Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) products (TRMM3B42 and TRMM3B42RT), Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS)/Noah, Asian Precipitation – Highly-Resolved Observational Data Integration Towards Evaluation of Water Resources (APHRODITE), Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information using Artificial Neural Networks (PERSIANN), and a Global Satellite Mapping of Precipitation (GSMAP-MVK+) product. Two hydrological models of different complexities, i.e. a water and energy budget-based distributed hydrological model and a physically based semi-distributed hydrological model, are employed to investigate the influence of hydrological models on simulated discharges. Results show APHRODITE has high accuracy at a monthly scale compared with other products, and GSMAP-MVK+ shows huge advantage and is better than TRMM3B42 in relative bias (RB), Nash–Sutcliffe coefficient of efficiency (NSE), root mean square error (RMSE), correlation coefficient (CC), false alarm ratio, and critical success index. These findings could be very useful for validation, refinement, and future development of satellite-based products (e.g. NASA Global Precipitation Measurement). Although large uncertainty exists in heavy precipitation, hydrological models contribute most of the uncertainty in extreme discharges. Interactions between precipitation products and hydrological models can have the similar magnitude of contribution to discharge uncertainty as the hydrological models. A better precipitation product does not guarantee a better discharge simulation because of interactions. It is also found that a good discharge simulation depends on a good coalition of a hydrological model and a precipitation product, suggesting that, although the satellite-based precipitation products are not as accurate as the gauge-based products, they could have better performance in discharge simulations when appropriately combined with hydrological models. This information is revealed for the first time and very beneficial for precipitation product applications.

Highlights

Knowledge of precipitation plays an important role in the understanding of the water cycle, and in the management of water resources (Sellers, 1997; Sorooshian et al, 2005; Wang et al, 2005; Ebert et al, 2007; Buarque et al, 2011; Tapiador et al, 2012; Yong et al, 2012; Gao and Liu, 2013; Peng et al, 2014a, b)
The overall objectives of this paper are (1) to investigate the applicability of six fine-resolution precipitation products using both statistical and hydrological evaluation methods in a small river basin in northeast China; (2) to propose a framework to quantify the contributions of various uncertainties from precipitation products, hydrological models, and their interactions to uncertainty in simulated discharges
The results show that PERSIANN overestimates precipitation amount, while Li et al (2013) found PERSIANN underestimates rainfall in south China

Summary

Introduction

Knowledge of precipitation plays an important role in the understanding of the water cycle, and in the management of water resources (Sellers, 1997; Sorooshian et al, 2005; Wang et al, 2005; Ebert et al, 2007; Buarque et al, 2011; Tapiador et al, 2012; Yong et al, 2012; Gao and Liu, 2013; Peng et al, 2014a, b). Northeast China, which plays an important role in food production to support the country’s population and is an industrial region with many heavy industries, frequently suffers from drought, posing a threat to regional sustainable development. In such areas, due to insufficient gauge observations, alterna-. Qi et al.: Evaluation of global fine-resolution precipitation products and their uncertainty quantification tive precipitation data are required for efficient management of water resources

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