Evaluation of Statistical Downscaling Methods for Simulating Daily Precipitation Distribution, Frequency, and Temporal Sequence

HighlightsNine statistical downscaling methods from three downscaling categories were evaluated.Weather generator-based methods had advantages in simulating non-stationary precipitation.Differences in downscaling performance were smaller within each category than between categories.The performance of each downscaling method varied with climate conditions.Abstract. Spatial discrepancy between global climate model (GCM) projections and the climate data input required by hydrological models is a major limitation for assessing the impact of climate change on soil erosion and crop production at local scales. Statistical downscaling techniques are widely used to correct biases of GCM projections. The objective of this study was to evaluate the ability of nine statistical downscaling methods from three available statistical downscaling categories to simulate daily precipitation distribution, frequency, and temporal sequence at four Oklahoma weather stations representing arid to humid climate regions. The three downscaling categories included perfect prognosis (PP), model output statistics (MOS), and stochastic weather generator (SWG). To minimize the effect of GCM projection error on downscaling quality, the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Reanalysis 1 data at a 2.5° grid spacing (treated as observed grid data) were downscaled to the four weather stations (representing arid, semi-arid, sub humid, and humid regions) using the nine downscaling methods. The station observations were divided into calibration and validation periods in a way that maximized the differences in annual precipitation means between the two periods for assessing the ability of each method in downscaling non-stationary climate changes. All methods were ranked with three metrics (Euclidean distance, sum of absolute relative error, and absolute error) for their ability in simulating precipitation amounts at daily, monthly, yearly, and annual maximum scales. After eliminating the poorest two performers in simulating precipitation mean, distribution, frequency, and temporal sequence, the top four remaining methods in ascending order were Distribution-based Bias Correction (DBC), Generator for Point Climate Change (GPCC), SYNthetic weather generaTOR (SYNTOR), and LOCal Intensity scaling (LOCI). DBC and LOCI are bias-correction methods, and GPCC and SYNTOR are generator-based methods. The differences in performances among the downscaling methods were smaller within each downscaling category than between the categories. The performance of each method varied with the climate conditions of each station. Overall results indicated that the SWG methods had certain advantages in simulating daily precipitation distribution, frequency, and temporal sequence for non-stationary climate changes. Keywords: Climate change, Climate downscaling, Downscaling method evaluation, Statistical downscaling.