Operational Implementation of Satellite-Rain Gauge Data Merging for Hydrological Modeling

• Main Authors: Alejandra De Vera, Pablo Alfaro, Rafael Terra
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-02-01
• Series: Water
• Subjects: daily precipitation; satellite-based estimates; precipitation data merging; geostatistical methods; hydrological modeling; hydropower generation
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/13/4/533

Systems exposed to hydroclimatic variability, such as the integrated electric system in Uruguay, increasingly require real-time multiscale information to optimize management. Monitoring of the precipitation field is key to inform the future hydroelectric energy availability. We present an operational implementation of an algorithm that merges satellite precipitation estimates with rain gauge data, based on a 3-step technique: (i) Regression of station data on the satellite estimate using a Generalized Linear Model; (ii) Interpolation of the regression residuals at station locations to the entire grid using Ordinary Kriging and (iii) Application of a rain/no rain mask. The operational implementation follows five steps: (i) Data download and daily accumulation; (ii) Data quality control; (iii) Merging technique; (iv) Hydrological modeling and (v) Electricity-system simulation. The hydrological modeling is carried with the GR4J rainfall-runoff model applied to 17 sub-catchments of the G. Terra basin with routing up to the reservoir. The implementation became operational at the Electricity Market Administration (ADME) on June 2020. The performance of the merged precipitation estimate was evaluated through comparison with an independent, dense and uniformly distributed rain gauge network using several relevant statistics. Further validation is presented comparing the simulated inflow to the estimate derived from a reservoir mass budget. Results confirm that the estimation that incorporates the satellite information in addition to the surface observations has a higher performance than the one that only uses rain gauge data, both in the rainfall statistical evaluation and hydrological simulation.