Abstract:
During the past two decades, numerous datasets
have been developed for global/regional hydrological
assessment and modeling, but these datasets often show
differences in their spatial and temporal distributions of
precipitation, which is one of the most critical input variables
in global/regional hydrological modeling. This paper
is aimed to explore the precipitation characteristics of the
Water and Global Change (WATCH) forcing data (WFD)
and compare these with the corresponding characteristics
derived from satellite-gauge data (TRMM 3B42 and GPCP
1DD) and rain gauge data. It compared the consistency and
difference between the WFD and satellite-gauge data in
India and examined whether the pattern of seasonal (winter,
pre-monsoon, monsoon and post-monsoon) precipitation
over six regions [e.g. North Mountainous India (NMI),
Northwest India (NWI), North Central India (NCI), West
Peninsular India (WPI), East Peninsular India (EPI) and
South Peninsular India (SPI)] of India agrees well for the
gridded data to be useful in precipitation variability analyses.
The multi-time scale of precipitation in India was
analysed by wavelet transformation method using gauged
and WFD precipitation data. In general, precipitation from
WFD is larger than that from satellite-gauge data in NMI
and Western Ghats region whereas it is smaller in the dry
region of NWI. Both WFD and satellite-gauge datasets
underestimate precipitation compared to the measured data
but the precipitation from WFD is better estimated than
that from satellite-gauge data. It was found that the wavelet
power spectrum of precipitation based on WFD is reasonably
close to that of measured precipitation in NWI and
NCI, while slightly different in NMI. It is felt that the WFD
data can be used as a potential dataset for hydrological
study in India.
