ESSIC Visiting Research Scientist Huan Wu has a new paper in Journal of Hydrometeorology titled “Assessment of Precipitation Error Propagation in Discharge Simulations over the Contiguous United States” alongside Naijun Zhou from UMD’s Department of Geographical Sciences.
In the study, the researchers characterized precipitation error propagation through a distributed hydrological model based on the river basins across the contiguous United States in an effort to better understand the relationship between errors in precipitation inputs and simulated discharge. Using multiple conventional precipitation products, they found positive linear P-Q error relationships at annual and monthly timescales, and the stronger linearity for larger temporal accumulations. Precipitation errors are strongly dampened in basins characterized by temperate and continental climate regimes, showing highly nonlinear relationships, and radar-based precipitation products consistently show dampening effects on error propagation compared to the other precipitation products. Precipitation errors are at least doubled in simulated discharge for annual accumulations, while dampening effects tend to be more common in peak discharges.
In addition to his work at ESSIC, Wu is a professor and deputy director in the Guangdong Province Key Laboratory for Climate Change and Natural Disaster Studies and School of Atmospheric Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University.
Wu and Zhou’s co-authors include first author Nergui Nanding from Guangdong Province Key Laboratory for Climate Change and Natural Disaster Studies and researchers from the Southern Marine Science and Engineering Laboratory in China, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, George Mason University, Princeton University, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
To access the article, click here: “Assessment of Precipitation Error Propagation in Discharge Simulations over the Contiguous United States”.
