Natural Hazards and Earth System Science
www.nat-hazards-earth-syst-sci.net
1561-8633
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10
2
2010
10.5194/nhess-10-353-2010
http://www.nat-hazards-earth-syst-sci.net/10/353/2010/
http://www.nat-hazards-earth-syst-sci.net/10/353/2010/nhess-10-353-2010.html
http://www.nat-hazards-earth-syst-sci.net/10/353/2010/nhess-10-353-2010.pdf
353
370
2010-02-23
Use of past precipitation data for regionalisation of hourly rainfall in the low mountain ranges of Saxony, Germany
T. Pluntke
thomas.pluntke@tu-dresden.de
N. Jatho
C. Kurbjuhn
J. Dietrich
C. Bernhofer
Institute of Hydrology and Meteorology, Department of Meteorology, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany
Institute of Water Resources Management, Hydrology and Agricultural Hydraulic Engineering, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Hannover, Germany
Within the context of flood forecasting we deal with the improvement of
regionalisation methods for the generation of highly resolved (1 h,
1×1km<sup>2</sup>) precipitation fields, which can be used as input for
rainfall-runoff models or for verification of weather forecasts. Although
radar observations of precipitation are available in many regions, it might
be necessary to apply regionalisation methods near real-time for the cases
that radar is not available or observations are of low quality.
<br><br>
The aim of this paper is to investigate whether past precipitation
information can be used to improve regionalisation of rainfall. Within a case
study we determined typical precipitation Background-Fields (BGF) for the
mountainous and hilly regions of Saxony using hourly and daily rain gauge
data. Additionally, calibrated radar data served as past information for the
BGF generation. For regionalisation of precipitation we used de-trended
kriging and compared the results with another kriging based regionalisation
method and with Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW). The performance of the
methods was assessed by applying cross-validation, by inspection and by
evaluation with rainfall-runoff simulations.
<br><br>
The regionalisation of rainfall yielded better results in case of advective
events than in case of convective events. The performance of the applied
regionalisation methods showed no significant disagreement for different
precipitation types. Cross-validation results were rather similar in most
cases. Subjectively judged, the BGF-method reproduced best the structures of
rain cells. Precipitation input derived from radar or kriging resulted in a
better matching between observed and simulated flood hydrographs. Simple
techniques like IDW also deliver satisfying results in some occasions.
Implementation of past radar data into the BGF-method rendered no
improvement, because of data shortages. Thus, no method proved to outperform
the others generally. The decision, which method is appropriate for an event,
should be made objectively using cross-validation, but also subjectively,
using the expert knowledge of the forecaster.
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