Investigating hydrologic responses to spatio‐temporal characteristics of storms using a Dynamic Moving Storm generator

Abstract

AbstractA synthetic storm generator—Dynamic Moving Storm (DMS)—is developed in this study to represent spatio‐temporal variabilities of rainfall and storm movement in synthetic storms. Using an urban watershed as the testbed, the authors investigate the hydrologic responses to the DMS parameters and their interactions. In order to reveal the complex nature of rainfall–run‐off processes, previously simplified assumptions are relaxed in this study regarding (a) temporal variability of rainfall intensity and (b) time‐invariant flow velocity in channel routing. The results of this study demonstrate the significant contribution of storm moving velocity to the variation of peak discharge based on a global sensitivity analysis. Furthermore, a pairwise sensitivity analysis is conducted to elucidate not only the patterns in individual contributions from parameters to hydrologic responses but also their interactions with storm moving velocity. The intricacies of peak discharges resulting from sensitivity analyses are then dissected into independent hydrologic metrics, that is, run‐off volume and standard deviation of run‐off timings, for deeper insights. It is confirmed that peak discharge is increased when storms travel downstream along the main channel at the speed that corresponds to a temporal superposition of run‐off. Spatial concentration of catchment rainfall is found to be a critical linkage through which characteristics of moving storms affect peak discharges. In addition, altering peak timing of rainfall intensity in conjunction with storm movement results in varied storm core locations in the channel network, which further changes the flow attenuation effects from channel routing. For future directions, the DMS generator will be embedded in a stochastic modelling framework and applied in rainfall/flow frequency analysis.