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Pre‐processing rainfall data from multiple gauges to improve TOPMODEL simulation results in a large semi‐arid region
Author(s) -
Boston Trevor,
Xia Jun,
Zhu Yizhong
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
hydrological processes
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.222
H-Index - 161
eISSN - 1099-1085
pISSN - 0885-6087
DOI - 10.1002/hyp.5530
Subject(s) - environmental science , rain gauge , calibration , arid , weighting , hydrology (agriculture) , precipitation , soil science , meteorology , statistics , mathematics , geology , geography , medicine , paleontology , geotechnical engineering , radiology
Modelling of semi‐arid regions presents some complex challenges that must be overcome to produce reliable simulation results. This paper discusses the findings of a calibration and cross‐validation process using TOPMODEL to simulate stream discharge from the semi‐arid Banqiao sub‐catchment located in Gansu Province, China. Rainfall was pre‐processed using two different methods and compared against the use of mean rainfall data from 10 gauging stations. The results indicate that correlating multiple rainfall gauge measurements against stream discharge and weighting the rainfall gauges according to correlation factors can be a useful means of obtaining more representative rainfall input. The second method used a transfer function model (TFM) equipped with a non‐linear rainfall filter function to generate effective rainfall. The TFM was calibrated repeatedly using different degrees of non‐linearity in the rainfall filter function until an optimal model was found. The effective rainfall used to generate the best TFM was applied in TOPMODEL. Applying the TFM effective rainfall to TOPMODEL allowed better simulation of discharge than use of either the correlation‐weighted or mean rainfall input. Although the R 2 validation efficiencies or ‘goodness of fit’ generally lagged those seen during calibration, 90% of TOPMODEL validation runs using TFM effective rainfall and 60% of those using correlation‐weighted rainfall exceeded runs using mean rainfall. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.