Bartlett–Lewis Model Calibrated with Satellite-Derived Precipitation Data to Estimate Daily Peak 15 Min Rainfall Intensity

Temporal variability of rainfall is extreme in the rangelands of northern Australia and occurs at annual, decadal, and even longer timescales. To maintain long-term productivity of the rangelands of northern Australia under highly variable rainfall conditions, suitable land management practices are assessed using rangeland biophysical models, e.g., GRASP (GRASs Production). The daily maxima of the 15 min rainfall intensity (I15) are used to predict runoff and moisture retention in the model. The performance of rangeland biophysical models heavily relies on the I15 estimates. As the number of pluviograph stations is very limited in northern Australian rangelands, an empirical I15 model (Fraser) was developed using readily available daily climate variables, i.e., daily rainfall total, daily diurnal temperature range, and daily minimum temperature. The aim of this study is to estimate I15 from daily rainfall totals using a well-established disaggregation scheme coupled with the Bartlett–Lewis rectangular pulse (BLRP) model. In the absence of pluviograph data, the BLRP models (RBL-E and RBL-G) were calibrated with the precipitation statistics estimated using the Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM (global precipitation measurement) (IMERG; 30 min, 0.1° resolution) precipitation product. The Fraser, RBL-E, and RBL-G models were assessed using 1 min pluviograph data at a single test site in Darwin. The results indicated that all three models tended to underestimate the observed I15, while a serious underestimation was observed for RBL-E and RBL-G. The underestimation by the Fraser, RBL-E, and RBL-G models consisted of 23%, 38%, and 50% on average, respectively. Furthermore, the Fraser model represented 29% of the variation in observed I15, whereas RBL-E and RBL-G represented only 7% and 11% of the variation, respectively. A comparison of RBL-E and RBL-G suggested that the difference in the spatial scales of IMERG and pluviograph data needs to be addressed to improve the performance of RBL-E and RBL-G. Overall, the findings of this study demonstrate that the BLRP model calibrated with IMERG statistics has the potential for estimating I15 for the GRASP biophysical model once the scale difference between IMERG and point rainfall data is addressed.