Decomposing the satellite precipitation error propagation through the rainfall-runoff processes

This study uses an analytical hydrological framework to investigate the error propagation from satellite precipitation products to hydrological simulations. Specifically, the analytical formulation of the framework allows linking the error in hydrograph properties (i.e., cumulative volume, centroid, and dispersion) to the space-time characteristics of error in satellite-precipitation, runoff generation, and routing. Main finding from this study are that (i) the error in spatial and temporal covariance between rainfall and runoff generation is not contributing significantly to the error in cumulative volume of flood events; (ii) errors in runoff generation and routing time are of equal importance in terms of the overall error in the arrival of flood event centroid; and (iii) errors in the variability of runoff generation time is the main contributor to the error in dispersion of flood event hydrograph. Furthermore, sensitivity tests show that errors in hydrograph properties are strongly correlated with errors in the space-time characteristics of precipitation, runoff generation and routing parameters estimated by the analytical framework. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.