Articles | Volume 21, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-169-2017
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-169-2017
Research article
 | 
10 Jan 2017
Research article |  | 10 Jan 2017

Evaluating the streamflow simulation capability of PERSIANN-CDR daily rainfall products in two river basins on the Tibetan Plateau

Xiaomang Liu, Tiantian Yang, Koulin Hsu, Changming Liu, and Soroosh Sorooshian

Abstract. On the Tibetan Plateau, the limited ground-based rainfall information owing to a harsh environment has brought great challenges to hydrological studies. Satellite-based rainfall products, which allow for a better coverage than both radar network and rain gauges on the Tibetan Plateau, can be suitable alternatives for studies on investigating the hydrological processes and climate change. In this study, a newly developed daily satellite-based precipitation product, termed Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information Using Artificial Neural Networks – Climate Data Record (PERSIANN-CDR), is used as input for a hydrologic model to simulate streamflow in the upper Yellow and Yangtze River basins on the Tibetan Plateau. The results show that the simulated streamflows using PERSIANN-CDR precipitation and the Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) precipitation are closer to observation than that using limited gauge-based precipitation interpolation in the upper Yangtze River basin. The simulated streamflow using gauge-based precipitation are higher than the streamflow observation during the wet season. In the upper Yellow River basin, gauge-based precipitation, GLDAS precipitation, and PERSIANN-CDR precipitation have similar good performance in simulating streamflow. The evaluation of streamflow simulation capability in this study partly indicates that the PERSIANN-CDR rainfall product has good potential to be a reliable dataset and an alternative information source of a limited gauge network for conducting long-term hydrological and climate studies on the Tibetan Plateau.

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Short summary
A long-term, global, high-resolution, satellite-based precipitation estimation database (PERSIANN-CDR) was recently released. We evaluate the streamflow simulation capability of PERSIANN-CDR over two major river basins on the Tibetan Plateau. Results show that PERSIANN-CDR is a good alternative for a sparse gauge network and has the potentials for future hydrological and climate studies. The streamflow uncertainties are due to the hydrological model parameters and the length of calibration data.