Preprint Article Version 2 Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed

The China Meteorological Assimilation Driving Datasets for the SWAT Model (CMADS) Application in China: A Case Study in Heihe River Basin

Version 1 : Received: 16 December 2016 / Approved: 18 December 2016 / Online: 18 December 2016 (05:12:01 CET)
Version 2 : Received: 2 February 2017 / Approved: 3 February 2017 / Online: 3 February 2017 (03:50:07 CET)

How to cite: Meng, X.; Wang, H.; Cai, S.; Zhang, X.; Leng, G.; Lei, X.; Shi, C.; Liu, S.; Shang, Y. The China Meteorological Assimilation Driving Datasets for the SWAT Model (CMADS) Application in China: A Case Study in Heihe River Basin. Preprints 2016, 2016120091. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints201612.0091.v2 Meng, X.; Wang, H.; Cai, S.; Zhang, X.; Leng, G.; Lei, X.; Shi, C.; Liu, S.; Shang, Y. The China Meteorological Assimilation Driving Datasets for the SWAT Model (CMADS) Application in China: A Case Study in Heihe River Basin. Preprints 2016, 2016120091. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints201612.0091.v2

Abstract

Large-scale hydrological modeling in China is challenging given the sparse meteorological stations and large uncertainties associated with atmospheric forcing data.Here we introduce the development and use of the China Meteorological Assimilation Driving Datasets for the SWAT model (CMADS) in the Heihe River Basin(HRB) for improving hydrologic modeling, by leveraging the datasets from the China Meteorological Administration Land Data Assimilation System (CLDAS)(including climate data from nearly 40000 area encryption stations, 2700 national automatic weather stations, FengYun (FY) 2 satellite and radar stations). CMADS uses the Space Time Multiscale Analysis System (STMAS) to fuse data based on ECWMF ambient field and ensure data accuracy. In addition, compared with CLDAS, CMADS includes relative humidity and climate data of varied resolutions to drive hydrological models such as the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model. Here, we compared climate data from CMADS, Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR) and traditional weather station (TWS) climate forcing data and evaluatedtheir applicability for driving large scale hydrologic modeling with SWAT. In general, CMADS has higher accuracy than CFRS when evaluated against observations at TWS; CMADS also provides spatially continuous climate field to drive distributed hydrologic models, which is an important advantage over TWS climate data, particular in regions with sparse weather stations. Therefore, SWAT model simulations driven with CMADS and TWS achieved similar performances in terms of monthly and daily stream flow simulations, and both of them outperformed CFRS. For example, for the three hydrological stations (Ying Luoxia, Qilian Mountain, and ZhaMasheke) in the HRB at the monthly and daily Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency ranges of 0.75-0.95 and 0.58-0.78, respectively, which are much higher than corresponding efficiency statistics achieved with CFSR (monthly: 0.32-0.49 and daily: 0.26 – 0.45). The CMADS dataset is available free of charge and is expected to a valuable addition to the existing climate reanalysis datasets for deriving distributed hydrologic modeling in China and other countries in East Asia.

Keywords

reanalysis climate data; hydrologic modeling; comparative analysis

Subject

Environmental and Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Geology

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