TY - JOUR

T1 - Does the complexity in temporal precipitation disaggregation matter for a lumped hydrological model?

AU - Müller-Thomy, Hannes

AU - Sikorska-Senoner, Anna E.

N1 - Funding Information: was provided for Hannes Müller-Thomy as a Research Fellowship (MU 4257/1-1) by DFG e.V., Bonn, Germany. Anna E. Sikorska-Senoner acknowledges funding from the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) via the contract 15.0054.PJ/O503-1381. Runoff data were provided by the FOEN and the Canton of Argovia (Surb-Döttingen), and precipitation and temperature data were provided by MeteoSwiss. The authors acknowledge the TU Wien Library for financial support through its Open Access Funding Program. The authors thank the associate editor Guillaume Thirel, Claudia Brauer and one anonymous reviewer for their useful comments, which helped us improve this manuscript.

PY - 2019/9/10

Y1 - 2019/9/10

N2 - Flood peaks and volumes are essential design variables and can be simulated by precipitation–runoff (P–R) modelling. The high-resolution precipitation time series that are often required for this purpose can be generated by various temporal disaggregation methods. Here, we compare a simple method (M1, one parameter), focusing on the effective precipitation duration for flood simulations, with a multiplicative cascade model (M2, 32/36 parameters). While M2 aims at generating realistic characteristics of precipitation time series, M1 aims only at accurately reproducing flood variables by P–R modelling. Both disaggregation methods were tested on precipitation time series of nine Swiss mesoscale catchments. The generated high-resolution time series served as input for P–R modelling using a lumped HBV model. The results indicate that differences identified in precipitation characteristics of disaggregated time series vanish when introduced into the lumped hydrological model. Moreover, flood peaks were more sensitive than flood volumes to the choice of disaggregation method.

AB - Flood peaks and volumes are essential design variables and can be simulated by precipitation–runoff (P–R) modelling. The high-resolution precipitation time series that are often required for this purpose can be generated by various temporal disaggregation methods. Here, we compare a simple method (M1, one parameter), focusing on the effective precipitation duration for flood simulations, with a multiplicative cascade model (M2, 32/36 parameters). While M2 aims at generating realistic characteristics of precipitation time series, M1 aims only at accurately reproducing flood variables by P–R modelling. Both disaggregation methods were tested on precipitation time series of nine Swiss mesoscale catchments. The generated high-resolution time series served as input for P–R modelling using a lumped HBV model. The results indicate that differences identified in precipitation characteristics of disaggregated time series vanish when introduced into the lumped hydrological model. Moreover, flood peaks were more sensitive than flood volumes to the choice of disaggregation method.

KW - effective daily precipitation duration

KW - floods

KW - multiplicative cascade model

KW - precipitation disaggregation

KW - precipitation-runoff modelling

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85070529292&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1080/02626667.2019.1638926

DO - 10.1080/02626667.2019.1638926

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85070529292

VL - 64

SP - 1453

EP - 1471

JO - Hydrological sciences journal

JF - Hydrological sciences journal

SN - 0262-6667

IS - 12

ER -