Evaluation of Precipitation Products by Using Multiple Hydrological Models over the Upper Yellow River Basin, China

In this study, 6 widely used precipitation products APHRODITE, CPC_UNI_PRCP, CN05.1, PERSIANN-CDR, Princeton Global Forcing (PGF), and TRMM 3B42 V7 (TMPA), were evaluated against gauge observations (CMA data) from 1998 to 2014, and applied to streamflow simulation over the Upper Yellow River basin (UYRB), using 4 hydrological models (DWBM, RCCC-WBM, GR4J, and VIC). The relative membership degree (u), as the comprehensive evaluation index in the hydrological evaluation, was calculated by the optimum fuzzy model. The results showed that the spatial pattern of precipitation from the CMA dataset and the other 6 precipitation products were very consistent with each other. The satellite-derived rainfall products (SDFE), like PSERSIANN-CDR and TMPA, depicted considerably finer and more detailed spatial heterogeneity. The SDFE and reanalysis (RA) products could estimate the monthly precipitation very well at both gauge and basin-average scales. The runoff simulation results indicated that the APHRODITE and TMPA were superior to the other 4 precipitation datasets, obtaining much higher scores, with average u values of 0.88 and 0.77. The precipitation estimation products tended to show better performance in streamflow simulation at the downstream hydrometric stations. In terms of performance of hydrological models, the RCCC–WBM model showed the best potential for monthly streamflow simulation, followed by the DWBM. It indicated that the monthly models were more flexible than daily conceptual or distributed models in hydrological evaluation of SDFE or RA products, and that the difference in precipitation estimates from various precipitation datasets were more influential in the GR4J and VIC models.