Application of the stochastic model for temporal rainfall disaggregation for hydrological studies in north western England

Abstract

Assessment of climate change on any hydrological system requires higher temporal resolution at hourly or less in terms of time scale. This paper implements the Bartlett–Lewis Rectangular Pulses (BLRP) model coupled with a proportional adjusting procedure to disaggregate daily rainfall to hourly rainfall in order to demonstrate the reliability of this method. Three stations in northwestern England have been selected that represent different climates in the region. Parameters estimation of the BLRP model has been performed under different levels of hourly rainfall aggregation for a combination of rainfall statistics. The HYETOS model, which applies BLRP, reproduced standard statistics such as mean, variance, Lag-1, autocorrelation as well as dry proportions. Moreover, the model was proven to have the capability to disaggregate the rainfall extremes. The fitted BLRP model could then be used to disaggregate future daily rainfall in order to investigate the climate change impact of different rainfall intensities.