Merged rainfall fields for continuous simulation modelling

Abstract

Long sequences of rainfall at fine spatial and temporal detail are increasingly required, not only for hydrological studies, but also to provide inputs for models of crop growth, landfills, tailings dams, liquid waste disposal on land and other environmentally sensitive projects. Rainfall information derived from rain gauges, radar or satellites may not individually be adequate to meet the detail required by hydrological models or other water resource studies. Therefore, a suitable technique is required to estimate rainfall at finer spatial and temporal resolutions. Different techniques have been developed to merge rainfall information from rain gauges, radar and satellites in order to obtain the ‘best’ estimate of the ‘true’ rainfall field. However, the length of the radar and satellite estimated rainfall records is currently limited. In this study, the mean areal merged rain fall, derived from rain gauges and radar, was estimated for 26 subcatchments in the Liebenbergsvlei catchment, which is a research catchment, in South Africa for the period when radar data were available.

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