Accuracy Evaluation of Rainfall Disaggregation Methods
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 9, Issue 2
Abstract
Hourly rainfall depths are probably the most important data input for the simulation of watershed, instream, and water quality processes such as when using the Hydrological Simulation Program FORTRAN model. However, the density of stations measuring precipitation data on an hourly basis is low, so the disaggregation of daily rainfall values or the transfer of information from nearby stations is commonly applied. This investigation evaluated the accuracy of four methods for estimating hourly precipitation depths and assessed whether or not the accuracy of the estimates was a function of the distance between stations. Hourly rainfall records from 74 gauges located within or near the Chesapeake Bay watershed were used to evaluate the biases and accuracies of procedures for disaggregating measured daily depths into hourly amounts or transferring rainfall information for nearby gauges. None of the four methods provided accurate predictions of hourly rainfall, which suggests that it is difficult to get reliable estimates of hourly rainfall intensities by disaggregating daily totals or transferring hourly values from nearby gauges. However, the transfer of daily totals is more accurate than the estimation of hourly depths.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 9 • Issue 2 • March 2004
Pages: 71 - 78
Copyright
Copyright © 2004 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Dec 11, 2002
Accepted: Apr 20, 2003
Published online: Feb 19, 2004
Published in print: Mar 2004
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