| Title: | Evaluation of satellite precipitation products in simulating streamflow in a humid tropical catchment of India using a semi-distributed hydrological model |
| Authors: | Sharannya, T.M., N. Al-Ansari, S.D. Barma and A. Mahesha |
| Year: | 2020 |
| Journal: | Water |
| Volume (Issue): | 12(9) |
| Pages: | |
| Article ID: | 2400 |
| DOI: | 10.3390/w12092400 |
| URL (non-DOI journals): | |
| Model: | SWAT |
| Broad Application Category: | hydrologic only |
| Primary Application Category: | climate data effects |
| Secondary Application Category: | hydrologic assessment |
| Watershed Description: | 840 km^2 Gurupura River, which originates in the Western Ghats mountain range and drains a portion of the east central part of the State of Karnataka in southeast India. |
| Calibration Summary: | |
| Validation Summary: | |
| General Comments: | |
| Abstract: | Precipitation obtained from rain gauges is an essential input for hydrological modelling. It is often sparse in highly topographically varying terrain, exhibiting a certain amount of uncertainty in hydrological modelling. Hence, satellite rainfall estimates have been used as an alternative or as a supplement to station observations. In this study, an attempt was made to evaluate the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) and Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Station data (CHIRPS), employing a semi-distributed hydrological model, i.e., Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), for simulating streamflow and validating them against the flows generated by the India Meteorological Department (IMD) rainfall dataset in the Gurupura river catchment of India. Distinct testing scenarios for simulating streamflow were made to check the suitability of these satellite precipitation data. The TRMM was able to better estimate rainfall than CHIRPS after performing categorical and continuous statistical results with respect to IMD rainfall data. While comparing the performance of model simulations, the IMD rainfall-driven streamflow emerged as the best followed by the TRMM, CHIRPS-0.05, and CHIRPS-0.25. The coefficient of determination (R2), Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE), and percent bias (PBIAS) were in the range 0.63 to 0.86, 0.62 to 0.86, and −14.98 to 0.87, respectively. Further, an attempt was made to examine the spatial distribution of key hydrological signature, i.e., flow duration curve (FDC) in the 30–95 percentile range of non-exceedance probability. It was observed that TRMM underestimated the flow for agricultural water availability corresponding to 30 percent, even though it showed a good performance compared to the other satellite rainfall-driven model outputs. |
| Language: | English |
| Keywords: | CHIRPS, FDC, hydrological signature, SWAT, TRMM, Western Ghats |