A mathematical spatial interpolation method for the estimation of convective rainfall distribution over small watersheds

Rainfall is one of crucial factors that impact on our environment. Rainfall data is important in water resources management, flood forecasting, and designing hydraulic structures. However, it is not available in some rural watersheds without rain gauges. Thus, effective ways of interpolating the available records are needed. Despite many widely used spatial interpolation methods, few studies have investigated rainfall center characteristics. Based on the theory that the spatial distribution of convective rainfall event has a definite center with maximum rainfall, we present a mathematical interpolation method to estimate convective rainfall distribution and indicate the rainfall center location and the center rainfall volume. We apply the method to estimate three convective rainfall events in Santa Catalina Island where reliable hydrological data is available. A cross-validation technique is used to evaluate the method. The result shows that the method will suffer from high relative error in two situations: 1) when estimating the minimum rainfall and 2) when estimating an external site. For all other situations, the method's performance is reasonable and acceptable. Since the method is based on a continuous function, it can provide distributed rainfall data for distributed hydrological model sand indicate statistical characteristics of given areas via mathematical calculation. KCI Citation Count: 0