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Validation of a new meteorological forcing data in analysis of spatial and temporal variability of precipitation in India

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An Erratum to this article was published on 04 March 2014

Abstract

During the past two decades, numerous datasets have been developed for global/regional hydrological assessment and modeling, but these datasets often show differences in their spatial and temporal distributions of precipitation, which is one of the most critical input variables in global/regional hydrological modeling. This paper is aimed to explore the precipitation characteristics of the Water and Global Change (WATCH) forcing data (WFD) and compare these with the corresponding characteristics derived from satellite-gauge data (TRMM 3B42 and GPCP 1DD) and rain gauge data. It compared the consistency and difference between the WFD and satellite-gauge data in India and examined whether the pattern of seasonal (winter, pre-monsoon, monsoon and post-monsoon) precipitation over six regions [e.g. North Mountainous India (NMI), Northwest India (NWI), North Central India (NCI), West Peninsular India (WPI), East Peninsular India (EPI) and South Peninsular India (SPI)] of India agrees well for the gridded data to be useful in precipitation variability analyses. The multi-time scale of precipitation in India was analysed by wavelet transformation method using gauged and WFD precipitation data. In general, precipitation from WFD is larger than that from satellite-gauge data in NMI and Western Ghats region whereas it is smaller in the dry region of NWI. Both WFD and satellite-gauge datasets underestimate precipitation compared to the measured data but the precipitation from WFD is better estimated than that from satellite-gauge data. It was found that the wavelet power spectrum of precipitation based on WFD is reasonably close to that of measured precipitation in NWI and NCI, while slightly different in NMI. It is felt that the WFD data can be used as a potential dataset for hydrological study in India.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. Lebing Gong for setting the satellite-gauge data dataset. This study was jointly funded by the Research Council of Norway, Research project-JOINTINDNOR 203867, Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India, and project 190159/V10 (SoCoCA).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Uni Climate, Uni Research, Bergen, Norway

    Lu Li

  2. Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, Bergen, Norway

    Lu Li

  3. Department of Geosciences, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1047, Blindern, 0316, Oslo, Norway

    Chong-Yu Xu

  4. Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Chong-Yu Xu

  5. Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Forestry Ecological Engineering, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing, 210037, China

    Zengxin Zhang

  6. National Institute of Hydrology, Roorkee, 247 667, India

    Sharad K. Jain

  7. Department of Geosciences, University of Oslo, Postboks 7801, 5020, Bergen, Norway

    Lu Li

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  1. Lu Li
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Correspondence to Chong-Yu Xu.

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Li, L., Xu, CY., Zhang, Z. et al. Validation of a new meteorological forcing data in analysis of spatial and temporal variability of precipitation in India. Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess 28, 239–252 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00477-013-0745-7

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