Title
Accounting for dependencies in regionalized signatures for predictions in ungauged catchments
Date Issued
10 June 2015
Access level
open access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Imperial College London
Publisher(s)
Copernicus GmbH
Abstract
A recurrent problem in hydrology is the absence of streamflow data to calibrate rainfall-runoff models. A commonly used approach in such circumstances conditions model parameters on regionalized response signatures. While several different signatures are often available to be included in this process, an outstanding challenge is the selection of signatures that provide useful and complementary information. Different signatures do not necessarily provide independent information, and this has led to signatures being omitted or included on a subjective basis. This paper presents a method that accounts for the inter-signature error correlation structure so that regional information is neither neglected nor double-counted when multiple signatures are included. Using 84 catchments from the MOPEX database, observed signatures are regressed against physical and climatic catchment attributes. The derived relationships are then utilized to assess the joint probability distribution of the signature regionalization errors that is subsequently used in a Bayesian procedure to condition a rainfall-runoff model. The results show that the consideration of the inter-signature error structure may improve predictions when the error correlations are strong. However, other uncertainties such as model structure and observational error may outweigh the importance of these correlations. Further, these other uncertainties cause some signatures to appear repeatedly to be disinformative.
Start page
5389
End page
5426
Volume
12
Issue
6
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Oceanografía, Hidrología, Recursos hídricos
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-84983432283
Source
Hydrology and Earth System Sciences Discussions
ISSN of the container
18122108
Sponsor(s)
Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia - SFRH/BD/65522/2009
Natural Environment Research Council - NE/J016578/1, NE/J017450/1 NERC
Sources of information:
Directorio de Producción Científica
Scopus
Scopus