HR: 12:05h
AN: H32A-08    [Abstracts]
TI: Evaluating Satellite Rainfall Products and their Impacts in hydrologic Model simulations
AU: * Zeweldi, D A
EM: dawit@engr.uconn.edu
AF: Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269-2037, United States
AU: Gebremichael, M
EM: mekonnen@engr.uconn.edu
AF: Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269-2037, United States
AU: Anagonustou, E N
AF: Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269-2037, United States
AU: Vivoni, E R
AF: Department of earth and Environmental Science, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, Socorro, NM 87801, United States
AB: Recent research works have produced satellite-based high-resolution rainfall products, such as, PERSIANN, CMORPH and TRMM's 3B42. These products have their own limitations in terms of estimation accuracy and space-time resolutions, and hence, their potential and utility for hydrological applications has yet to be assessed. In this study, we evaluate the accuracy of the rainfall products by comparing them with high-quality and dense ground-based rainfall observations, and assess their hydrological impacts by comparing observed streamflows with hydrologic model simulations forced by satellite rainfall products. We focus our work on the Little Washita watershed (610 km2) in central Oklahoma, which contains high-quality radar datasets, a dense network of rain gauges (42 rain gauges), five stream gauges, and three meteorological stations. In the first part of the study, we describe the accuracy of the satellite rainfall products on different space-time resolutions, using a variety of performance metrics. In the second part, we describe the performance of the hydrologic model forced by satellite rainfall products with respect to reproducing observed streamflow data. We used a physically-based, fully- distributed hydrologic model, known as the TIN-based Real-time Integrated Basin Simulator (tRIBS) for this investigation. The results of this study will shed light on the accuracy of satellite rainfall products, both from meteorological and hydrological perspectives.
DE: 1840 Hydrometeorology
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting