A COMPARISON OF SIMULATED RUNOFF BASED ON GROUND RAIN GAUGES AND PERSIANN-CDR SATELLITE PRECIPITATION RECORDS USING SWAT MODEL

Abstract. Easy access to valid climatic data has always played a fundamental role in progressing hydrological studies. That is why numerous satellite-based precipitation products (SPPs) have been generated in the contemporary era. Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information Using Artificial Neural Networks–Climate Data Record (PERSIANN-CDR) is considered one of the most popular climatic databases which started to produce daily rainfall data with 0.25° × 0.25° temporal and spatial resolutions in 1983. The aim of this research is to evaluate how well PERSIANN-CDR has performed in a rainfall-runoff modeling application over the period of 1994 to 2015. In this regard, using Soil & Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), two rainfall-runoff models based on Ground-based Rain Gauge stations (GRGs) and PERSIANN-CDR precipitation records were developed for the Chelgerd sub-basin, which is the main branch of the Zayandeh-Roud Basin in central Iran, in order to analyze how accurate the simulated runoff by PERSIANN-CDR database is. Comparing the developed SWAT model calibration results using the satellite database precipitation (NS = 0.78, P-Factor = 0.52, and R-Factor = 0.41) to calibration results of the developed model based on GRGs (NS = 0.81, P-Factor = 0.54, and R-Factor = 0.42) showed that although PERSIANN-CDR precipitation magnitudes were typically less than GRGs records, accuracy indicators of simulated runoffs to Ghale-Shahrokh were almost the same.