Browse by author
Lookup NU author(s): Dr Francesco Serinaldi
Generating fine-scale time series of intermittent rainfall that are fully consistent with any given coarse-scale totals is a key and open issue in many hydrological problems. We propose a stationary disaggregation method that simulates rainfall time series with given dependence structure, wet/dry probability, and marginal distribution at a target finer (lower-level) time scale, preserving full consistency with variables at a parent coarser (higher-level) time scale. We account for the intermittent character of rainfall at fine time scales by merging a discrete stochastic representation of intermittency and a continuous one of rainfall depths. This approach yields a unique and parsimonious mathematical framework providing general analytical formulations of mean, variance, and autocorrelation function (ACF) for a mixed-type stochastic process in terms of mean, variance, and ACFs of both continuous and discrete components, respectively. To achieve the full consistency between variables at finer and coarser time scales in terms of marginal distribution and coarse-scale totals, the generated lower-level series are adjusted according to a procedure that does not affect the stochastic structure implied by the original model. To assess model performance, we study the rainfall process as intermittent with both independent and dependent occurrences, where dependence is quantified by the probability that two consecutive time intervals are dry. In either case, we provide analytical formulations of the main statistics of our mixed-type disaggregation model and show their clear accordance with Monte Carlo simulations. An application to rainfall time series from the real world is shown as a proof of concept.
Author(s): Lombardo F, Volpi E, Koutsoyiannis D, Serinaldi F
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Water Resources Research
Year: 2017
Volume: 53
Issue: 6
Pages: 4586-4605
Print publication date: 01/06/2017
Online publication date: 12/05/2017
Acceptance date: 05/05/2017
Date deposited: 14/06/2017
ISSN (print): 0043-1397
ISSN (electronic): 1944-7973
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, Inc.
URL: http://doi.org/10.1002/2017WR020529
DOI: 10.1002/2017WR020529
Altmetrics provided by Altmetric
