Abstract
Stochastic weather generator (SWG) produces synthetic time series of weather data based on the statistical characteristics of observed weather for a given location. Although SWG models are extensively evaluated and applied in different hydro-climate related studies, they often ignore the spatial correlation between weather patterns observed at multiple locations. This can limit the value of some spatial impact assessments such as flood modeling, agricultural crop modeling, water resources management and urban infrastructure design. To address such limitations, multisite SWG models are implemented to preserve the spatial characteristics of weather variables. In this study, we compared the performance of three multisite stochastic precipitation models, which includes modified Wilks model (modWilks), RainSim V3 (RSIM) and perturbed K-Nearest Neighbor (pKNN) models. The performances of these models are investigated for a study area located in the tropical monsoon climate region over Central Highland, Vietnam. The models are evaluated based on their performance for simulating precipitation occurrence and amount statistics on a wet day, extreme cumulative wet/dry days, transition and joint probability of wet/dry state, cross-correlation across all sites as well as the behavior of precipitation amount in relation to neighboring station state. The performance of model depends on the type of the precipitation characteristics, for example, the RSIM model performed well in term of the mean precipitation intensity. Overall, the pKNN model outperformed other models in term of temporal statistics, spatial characteristics, as well as extreme events measured based on Intensity–Duration–Frequency (IDF) curves.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Agilan V, Umamahesh NV (2019) Rainfall generator for nonstationary extreme rainfall condition. J Hydrol Eng 24(9):04019027. https://doi.org/10.1061/(asce)he.1943-5584.0001821
Apipattanavis S, Podestá G, Rajagopalan B, Katz RW (2007) A semiparametric multivariate and multisite weather generator. Water Resour Res 43:W11401. https://doi.org/10.1029/2006WR005714
Aryal K, Thapa PK, Lamichhane D (2019) Revisiting agroforestry for building climate resilient communities: a case of package-based integrated agroforestry practices in Nepal. Emerg Sci J 3(5):303–311
Baigorria GA, Jones JW (2010) GiST: a stochastic model for generating spatially and temporally correlated daily rainfall data. J Clim 23:5990–6008. https://doi.org/10.1175/2010JCLI3537.1
Bardossy A, Plate EJ (1992) Space–time model for daily rainfall using atmospheric circulation patterns. Water Resour Res 285:1247–1259. https://doi.org/10.1029/91WR02589
Beersma JJ, Buishand TA (2003) Multisite simulation of daily precipitation and temperature conditional on the atmospheric circulation. Clim Res 25:121–133. https://doi.org/10.3354/cr025121
Bogardi I, Matyasovszky I, Bardossy A, Duckstein L (1993) Application of space–time stochastic model for daily precipitation using atmospheric circulation patterns. J Geophys Res 98(D6):16653–16667. https://doi.org/10.1029/93JD00919
Bordoy R, Burlando P (2014) Stochastic downscaling of precipitation to high-resolution scenarios in orographically complex regions: 1. Model evaluation. Water Resour Res 50:540–561. https://doi.org/10.1002/2012WR013289
Bowman AW (1984) An alternative method of cross-validation for the smoothing of density estimates. Biometrika 71(2):353–360. https://doi.org/10.2307/2336252
Brissette FP, Khalili M, Leconte R (2007) Efficient stochastic generation of multisite synthetic precipitation data. J Hydrol 345:121–133. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2007.06.035
Buishand TA, Brandsma T (2001) Multisite simulation of daily precipitation and temperature in the Rhine basin by nearest-neighbor resampling. Water Resour Res 37:2761–2776. https://doi.org/10.1029/2001WR000291
Burton A, Kilsby CG, Fowler HJ, Cowpertwait PSP, O’Connell PE (2008) RainSim: a spatial-temporal stochastic rainfall modelling system. Environ Model Softw 23:1356–1369. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2008.04.003
Chao L, Singh VP, Mishra AK (2012) Simulation of the entire range of daily precipitation using a hybrid probability distribution. Water Resour Res 48:W03521. https://doi.org/10.1029/2011WR011446
Chen J, Brissette FP, Zhang XJ (2014) A multisite stochastic weather generator for daily precipitation and temperature. Trans ASABE 57:1375–1391. https://doi.org/10.13031/trans.57.10685
Cho HK, Bowman KP, North GR (2004) A comparison of gamma and lognormal distributions for characterizing satellite rain rates from the tropical rainfall measuring mission. J Appl Meteorol 43:1586–1597. https://doi.org/10.1175/JAM2165.1
Cowpertwait PSP (1995) A generalized spatial-temporal model of rainfall based on a clustered point process. Proc R Soc Lond Ser A 450:163–175. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspa.1995.0077
Cowpertwait PSP (1998) A Poisson-cluster model of rainfall: high-order moments and extreme values. Proc R Soc Lond Ser A 454:885–898. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspa.1998.0191
Cowpertwait PSP, Kilsby CG, O’Connell PE (2002) A space–time Neyman–Scott model of rainfall: empirical analysis of extremes. Water Resour Res 38(8):1131. https://doi.org/10.1029/2001WR000709
Dao DC, Nguyen TS, Nguyen QM, Nguyen TT, Tran TD (2020) An analysis of shoreline changes using combined multitemporal remote sensing and digital evaluation model. Civ Eng J 6(1):1–10. https://doi.org/10.28991/cej-2020-03091448
Devak M, Dhanya CT, Gosain AK (2015) Dynamic coupling of support vector machine and K-nearest neighbour for downscaling daily rainfall. J Hydrol 525:286–301. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2015.03.051
Duan Q, Gupta VK, Sorooshian S (1993) A shuffled complex evolution approach for effective and efficient optimization. J Optim Theory Appl 76(3):501–521. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00939380
Forsythe N, Fowler HJ, Blenkinsop S, Burton A, Kilsby CG, Archer DR, Harpham C, Hashmi MZ (2014) Application of a stochastic weather generator to assess climate change impacts in a semi-arid climate: the Upper Indus Basin. J Hydrol 517:1019–1034. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2014.06.031
Furrer EM, Katz RW (2008) Improving the simulation of extreme precipitation events by stochastic weather generators. Water Resour Res 44:W12439. https://doi.org/10.1029/2008WR007316
Gangopadhyay S, Clark M, Rajagopalan B (2005) Statistical downscaling using K-nearest neighbors. Water Resour Res 41:W02024. https://doi.org/10.1029/2004WR003444
Gregory JM, Wigley TML, Jones PD (1992) Determining and interpreting the order of a two-state Markov chain: application to models of daily precipitation. Water Resour Res 28:1443–1446. https://doi.org/10.1029/92WR00477
Hosking JRM (1990) L-moments: analysis and estimation of distributions using linear combinations of order statistics. J R Stat Soc 52:105–124
Hosking JRM, Wallis JR, Wood EF (1985) Estimation of the generalized extreme value distribution by the method of probability weighted moments. Technometrics 27:251–261. https://doi.org/10.1080/00401706.1985.10488049
Katz RW, Parlange MB, Naveau P (2002) Statistics of extremes in hydrology. Adv Water Resour 25:1287–1304. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0309-1708(02)00056-8
Kim D, Cho H, Onof C, Choi M (2017) Let-It-Rain: a web application for stochastic point rainfall generation at ungaged basins and its applicability in runoff and flood modeling. Stoch Env Res Risk Assess 31:1023–1043
Konapala G, Mishra AK, Wada Y, Mann M (2020) Climate change will affect global water availability through compounding changes in seasonal precipitation and evaporation. Nat Commun 11:3044. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-16757-w
Lall U, Sharma A (1996) A nearest neighbor bootstrap for resampling hydrological time series. Water Resour Res 32:679–693. https://doi.org/10.1029/95WR02966
Madsen H, Rasmussen PF, Rosbjerg D (1997) Comparison of annual maximum series and partial duration series methods for modeling extreme hydrologic events: 1. At-site modeling. Water Resour Res 33:747–758. https://doi.org/10.1029/96WR03848
Mehrotra R, Sharma A (2009) Evaluating spatio-temporal representations in daily rainfall sequences from three stochastic multisite weather generation approaches. Adv Water Resour 32:948–962. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.advwatres.2009.03.005
Mehrotra R, Srikanthan R, Sharma A (2006) A comparison of three stochastic multisite precipitation occurrence generators. J Hydrol 331:280–292. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2006.05.016
Mhanna M, Bauwens W (2012) A stochastic space–time model for the generation of daily rainfall in the Gaza Strip. Int J Climatol 32:1098–1112. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.2305
Mishra AK, Coulibaly P (2009) Developments in hydrometric network design: a review. Rev Geophys 47:RG2001. https://doi.org/10.1029/2007rg000243
Muluye GY (2011) Deriving meteorological variables from numerical weather prediction model output: a nearest neighbor approach. Water Resour Res 47:W07509. https://doi.org/10.1029/2010WR009750
Neyman J, Scott EL (1958) Statistical approach to problems of cosmology. J R Stat Soc B 20:1–29
Nguyen TT (2019) Evaluation of multi-precipitation products for multi-time scales and spatial distribution during 2007–2015. Civ Eng J 5(1):255–267. https://doi.org/10.28991/cej-2019-03091242
Nicks AD, Gander GA (1994) CLIGEN: a weather generator for climate inputs to water resources and other models. In: Watson DG, Zazueta FS, Harrison TV (eds.), Proceedings of fifth international conference on computer in agriculture. ASAE, St. Joseph, MI, pp 903–909
Peck A, Prodanovic P, Simonovic SPP (2012) Rainfall intensity duration frequency curves under climate change: city of London, Ontario, Canada. Can Water Res J 37(3):177–189. https://doi.org/10.4296/cwrj2011-935
Pickering NB, Hansen JW, Jones JW, Wells CM, Chan VK, Godwin DC (1994) WeatherMan: a utility for managing and generating daily weather data. Agron J 86:332–337. https://doi.org/10.2134/agronj1994.00021962008600020023x
Qian B, Corte-Real J, Xu H (2002) Multisite stochastic weather models for impact studies. Int J Climatol 22:1377–1397. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.808
Rajagopalan B, Lall U (1999) A k–nearest-neighbor simulator for daily precipitation and other weather variables. Water Resour Res 35(10):3089–3101. https://doi.org/10.1029/1999WR900028
Richardson CW (1981) Stochastic simulation of daily precipitation, temperature, and solar radiation. Water Resour Res 17:182–190. https://doi.org/10.1029/WR017i001p00182
Rodriguez-Iturbe I, Cox DR, Isham V (1987) Some models for rainfall based on stochastic point processes. Proc R Soc Lond A 410:269–288. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspa.1987.0039
Rudemo M (1982) Empirical choice of histograms and kernel density estimators. Scand J Stat 9:65–78
Semenov MA, Barrow EM (1997) Use of a stochastic weather generator in the development of climate change scenarios. Clim Change 35:397–414. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005342632279
Sharif M, Burn DH (2007) Improved K-nearest neighbor weather generating model. J Hydrol Eng 12:42–51. https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)1084-0699(2007)12:1(42)
Sharma A, Lall U, Tarboton DG (1998) Kernel bandwidth selection for a first order nonparametric streamflow simulation model. Stoch Hydrol Hydraul 12(1):33–52. https://doi.org/10.1007/s004770050008
Shrestha A, Babel MK, Weesakul S, Vojinovic Z (2017) Developing intensity–duration–frequency (IDF) curves under climate change uncertainty: the case of Bangkok, Thailand. Water 9:145. https://doi.org/10.3390/w90200145
Smith RL (1985) Maximum likelihood estimation in a class of non regular cases. Biometrika 72:67–92. https://doi.org/10.2307/2336336
Steinschneider S, Brown C (2013) A semiparametric multivariate, multisite weather generator with low-frequency variability for use in climate risk assessments. Water Res Resour 49(11):7205–7220. https://doi.org/10.1002/wrcr.20528
Stockle CO, Campbell GS, Nelson R (1999) ClimGen Manual. Biological Systems Engineering Department, Washington State University, Pullman
Thorndahl S, Andersen AK, Larsen AB (2017) Event-based stochastic point rainfall resampling for statistical replication and climate projection of historical rainfall series. Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 21:4433–4448. https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-4433-2017
Vallam P, Qin X (2016) Multisite rainfall simulation at tropical regions: a comparison of three types of generators. Meteorol. Appl. 23:425–437. https://doi.org/10.1002/met.1567
Veneziano D, Furcolo P (2002) Multifractality of rainfall and scaling of intensity–duration–frequency curves. Water Res Resour 38(12):42. https://doi.org/10.1029/2001wr000372
Veneziano D, Yoon S (2013) Rainfall extremes, excesses, and intensity–duration–frequency curves: a unified asymptotic framework and new nonasymptotic results based on multifractal measures. Water Res Resour 49(7):4320–4334. https://doi.org/10.1002/wrcr.20352
Veneziano D, Lepore C, Langousis A, Furcolo P (2007) Marginal methods of intensity–duration–frequency estimation in scaling and nonscaling rainfall. Water Res Resour 43(10):1–14. https://doi.org/10.1029/2007WR006040
Vu MT, Mishra AK (2019) Nonstationary frequency analysis of the recent extreme precipitation events in the United States. J Hydrol 575:999–1010. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2019.05.090
Vu MT, Mishra AK, Konapala G, Liu D (2018) Evaluation of multiple stochastic rainfall generators in diverse climatic regions. Stoch Env Res Risk Assess 32(5):1337–1353. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00477-017-1458-0
Wilks DS (1998) Multisite generalization of a daily stochastic precipitation model. J Hydrol 210:178–191. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-1694(98)00186-3
Wilson PS, Toumi R (2005) A fundamental probability distribution for heavy rainfall. Geophys Res Lett 32:L14812. https://doi.org/10.1029/2005GL022465
Wilson LL, Lettenmaier DP, Skyllingstad E (1992) A hierarchical stochastic model of large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns and multiple station daily precipitation. J Geophys Res D3:2791–2809. https://doi.org/10.1029/91JD02155
Yates D, Gangopadhyay S, Rajagopalan B, Strzepek K (2003) A technique for generating regional climate scenarios using a nearest neighbor algorithm. Water Resour Res 39(7):1199. https://doi.org/10.1029/2002WR001769
Acknowledgements
Authors would like to thank the Risk Engineering and Systems Analytics Center, Clemson University, the Palmetto supercomputer for providing computing resources.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
We have no conflict of interest to report.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Appendix
Appendix
See Fig. 9.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Vu, T.M., Mishra, A.K. Performance of multisite stochastic precipitation models for a tropical monsoon region. Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess 34, 2159–2177 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00477-020-01871-4
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00477-020-01871-4