Kretzschmar, Ann and Tych, Wlodek and Chappell, Nick and Beven, Keith (2016) Reversing hydrology : quantifying the temporal aggregation effect of catchment rainfall estimation using sub-hourly data. Hydrology Research, 47 (3). pp. 630-645. ISSN 0029-1277
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Abstract
Inferred rainfall sequences generated by a novel method of inverting a continuous time transfer function show a smoothed profile when compared to the observed rainfall however streamflow generated using the inferred rainfall is almost identical to that generated using the observed rainfall (Rt2 = 95%). This paper compares the inferred effective and observed effective rainfall in both time and frequency domains in order to confirm that, by using the dominant catchment dynamics in the inversion process, the main characteristics of catchment rainfall are being captured by the inferred effective rainfall estimates. Estimates of the resolution of the inferred effective rainfall are found in the time domain by comparison with aggregated sequences of observed effective rainfall, and in the frequency domain by comparing the amplitude spectra of observed and inferred effective rainfall. The resolution of the rainfall estimates is affected by the slow time constant of the catchment and the rainfall regime, but also by the goodness-of-fit of the model, which incorporates the amount of other disturbances in the data.