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- Title
Spatial moments of catchment rainfall: rainfall spatial organisation, basin morphology, and flood response.
- Authors
Zoccatelli, D.; Borga, M.; Viglione, A.; Chirico, G. B.; Blöschl, G.
- Abstract
This paper provides a general analytical framework for assessing the dependence existing between spatial rainfall organisation, basin morphology and runoff response. The analytical framework builds upon a set of spatial rainfall statistics (termed "spatial moments of catchment rainfall") which describe the spatial rainfall organisation in terms of concentration and dispersion statistics as a function of the distance measured along the flow routing coordinate. The introduction of these statistics permits derivation of a simple relationship for the quantification of storm velocity at the catchment scale. The paper illustrates the development of the analytical framework and explains the conceptual meaning of the statistics by means of application to five extreme flash floods occurred in various European regions in the period 2002-2007. High resolution radar rainfall fields and a distributed hydrologic model are employed to examine how effective are these statistics in describing the degree of spatial rainfall organisation which is important for runoff modelling. This is obtained by quantifying the effects of neglecting the spatial rainfall variability on flood modelling, with a focus on runoff timing. The size of the study catchments ranges between 36 to 982 km². The analysis reported here shows that the spatial moments of catchment rainfall can be effectively employed to isolate and describe the features of rainfall spatial organization which have significant impact on runoff simulation. These statistics provide essential information on what space-time scales rainfall has to be monitored, given certain catchment and flood characteristics, and what are the effects of space-time aggregation on flood response modeling.
- Subjects
WATERSHEDS; FLOODS; RUNOFF; GEOLOGICAL basins; HYDROLOGIC models; STORMS; DISTRIBUTION (Probability theory)
- Publication
Hydrology & Earth System Sciences Discussions, 2011, Vol 8, Issue 3, p5811
- ISSN
1812-2108
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.5194/hessd-8-5811-2011