Water 2017, 9(3), 229; https://doi.org/10.3390/w9030229
Assessment of Three Long-Term Gridded Climate Products for Hydro-Climatic Simulations in Tropical River Basins
1
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117576, Singapore
2
Center for Agricultural and Rural Development, Iowa State University, 560a Heady Hall, Ames, IA 20011-1054, USA
3
School of Engineering, Physics and Mathematics, University of Dundee, Dundee DDI 4HN, UK
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editor: Karim Abbaspour
Received: 16 December 2016 / Revised: 28 February 2017 / Accepted: 14 March 2017 / Published: 21 March 2017
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Integrated Soil and Water Management: Selected Papers from 2016 International SWAT Conference)
Abstract
Gridded climate products (GCPs) provide a potential source for representing weather in remote, poor quality or short-term observation regions. The accuracy of three long-term GCPs (Asian Precipitation—Highly-Resolved Observational Data Integration towards Evaluation of Water Resources: APHRODITE, Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information using Artificial Neural Network-Climate Data Record: PERSIANN-CDR and National Centers for Environmental Prediction Climate Forecast System Reanalysis: NCEP-CFSR) was analyzed for the Kelantan River Basin (KRB) and Johor River Basin (JRB) in Malaysia from 1983 to 2007. Then, these GCPs were used as inputs into calibrated Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) models, to assess their capability in simulating streamflow. The results show that the APHRODITE data performed the best in precipitation estimation, followed by the PERSIANN-CDR and NCEP-CFSR datasets. The NCEP-CFSR daily maximum temperature data exhibited a better correlation than the minimum temperature data. For streamflow simulations, the APHRODITE data resulted in strong results for both basins, while the NCEP-CFSR data showed unsatisfactory performance. In contrast, the PERSIANN-CDR data showed acceptable representation of observed streamflow in the KRB, but failed to track the JRB observed streamflow. The combination of the APHRODITE precipitation and NCEP-CFSR temperature data resulted in accurate streamflow simulations. The APHRODITE and PERSIANN-CDR data often underestimated the extreme precipitation and streamflow, while the NCEP-CFSR data produced dramatic overestimations. Therefore, a direct application of NCEP-CFSR data should be avoided in this region. We recommend the use of APHRODITE precipitation and NCEP-CFSR temperature data in modeling of Malaysian water resources. View Full-TextKeywords:
NCEP-CFSR; APHRODITE; PERSIANN-CDR; SWAT; precipitation; Malaysia; streamflow; tropical; river; extreme
▼
Figures
Graphical abstract
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).
Share & Cite This Article
MDPI and ACS Style
Tan, M.L.; Gassman, P.W.; Cracknell, A.P. Assessment of Three Long-Term Gridded Climate Products for Hydro-Climatic Simulations in Tropical River Basins. Water 2017, 9, 229.
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.