Inter-comparison of daily precipitation products for large-scale hydro-climatic applications over Canada

Wong, Jefferson S.; Razavi, Saman; Bonsal, Barrie R.; Wheater, Howard S.; Asong, Zilefac E.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-2163-2017

Articles | Volume 21, issue 4

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-2163-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-2163-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 21, issue 4

Research article

|

20 Apr 2017

Research article |

| 20 Apr 2017

Inter-comparison of daily precipitation products for large-scale hydro-climatic applications over Canada

Jefferson S. Wong, Saman Razavi, Barrie R. Bonsal, Howard S. Wheater, and Zilefac E. Asong

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-2163-2017-supplement

Data sets

Adjusted and Homogenized Canadian Climate Data AHCCD http://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/d6813de6-b20a-46cc-8990-01862ae15c5f

Australian National University Spline model for Canada ANUSPLIN for Canada http://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/d432cb3d-8266-4487-b894-06224a4dfd5b

The Canadian Precipitation Analysis, Environment and Climate Change Canada CaPA http://collaboration.cmc.ec.gc.ca/cmc/cmoi/product_guide/docs/lib/capa_information_leaflet_20141118_en.pdf

COordinated Regional climate Downscaling EXperiment over the North American domain NA-CORDEX https://na-cordex.org/simulations-modeling-group

The North American Regional Reanalysis NARR https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/model-data/model-datasets/north-american-regional-reanalysis-narr

Statistically Downscaled Climate Scenarios Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium, University of Victoria https://www.pacificclimate.org/data/statistically-downscaled-climate-scenarios

The Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium PCIC https://www.pacificclimate.org/data/statistically-downscaled-climate-scenarios

Global dataset at the Princeton University Princeton http://hydrology.princeton.edu/data.pgf.php

Short summary

This study was conducted to quantify the spatial and temporal variability of the errors associated with various gridded precipitation products in Canada. Overall, WFDEI [GPCC] and CaPA performed best with respect to different performance measures, followed by ANUSPLIN and WEDEI [CRU]. Princeton and NARR demonstrated the lowest quality. Comparing the climate model-simulated products, PCIC ensembles generally performed better than NA-CORDEX ensembles in terms of reliability in four seasons.