Evaluating the performance of ground-based and remotely sensed near real-time rainfall fields from a hydrological perspective |
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| Authors: | Yonas Ghile Roland Schulze Casey Brown |
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| Institution: | 1. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering , University of Massachusetts , Amherst, Massachusetts, 01002, USA yonasg@engin.umass.edu;3. School of Bioresources Engineering and Environmental Hydrology, University of KwaZulu-Natal , South Africa;4. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering , University of Massachusetts , Amherst, Massachusetts, 01002, USA |
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| Abstract: | Abstract The South African Weather Service (SAWS) issues routine experimental, near real-time rainfall maps from daily raingauge networks, radar networks and satellite images, as well as merged rainfall fields. These products are potentially useful for near real-time forecasting, especially in areas of fast hydrological response, and also to simulate the “now state” of various hydrological state variables such as soil moisture content, streamflow, and reservoir inflows. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate their skill as inputs to hydrological simulations and, in particular, the skill of the merged field in terms of better hydrological results relative to the individual products. Rainfall fields derived from raingauge, radar, satellite, conditioned satellite and the merged (gauge/radar/satellite) were evaluated for two selected days with relatively high amounts of rainfall, as well as for a continuous period of 90 days in the Mgeni catchment, South Africa. Streamflows simulated with the ACRU model indicate that the use of raingauge as well as merged fields of satellite/raingauge and satellite/radars/raingauge provides relatively realistic rainfall results, without much difference in their hydrological outputs, whereas the radar and raw satellite information by themselves cannot be used in operational hydrological application in their current status. Citation Ghile, Y., Schulze, R. & Brown, C. (2010) Evaluating the performance of ground-based and remotely sensed near real-time rainfall fields from a hydrological perspective. Hydrol. Sci. J. 55(4), 497–511. |
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| Keywords: | raingauge radar satellite merged field ACRU streamflow |
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