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Comparison of geostatistical methods for estimating the areal average climatological rainfall mean using data on precipitation and topography
Author(s) -
PardoIgúzquiza Eulogio
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
international journal of climatology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.58
H-Index - 166
eISSN - 1097-0088
pISSN - 0899-8418
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1097-0088(199807)18:9<1031::aid-joc303>3.0.co;2-u
Subject(s) - kriging , variogram , precipitation , orographic lift , climatology , estimator , environmental science , meteorology , geology , statistics , mathematics , geography
The results of estimating the areal average climatological rainfall mean in the Guadalhorce river basin in southern Spain are presented in this paper. The classical Thiessen method and three different geostatistical approaches (ordinary kriging, cokriging and kriging with an external drift) have been used as estimators and their results are compared and discussed. The first two methods use only rainfall information, while cokriging and kriging with an external drift use both precipitation data and orographic information (easily accessible from topographic maps). In the case study presented, kriging with an external drift seems to give the most coherent results in accordance with cross‐validation statistics. If there is a correlation between climatological rainfall mean and altitude, it seems logical that the inclusion of topographic information should improve the estimates. Kriging with an external drift has the advantage of requiring a less demanding variogram analysis than cokriging. © 1998 Royal Meteorological Society