Stochastic Simulation of Precipitation Fields Conditioned on Radar and Gauge Information

Precipitation is the main input variable for hydrological modelling. Operational precipitation data are usually provided by rain gauges, weather radar and sometimes satellite observations., Precipitation data with very high spatial and temporal resolution is necessary especially for flash flood forecasting in small catchments. Usually these can neither be provided by rain gauge networks nor satellite measurements. However, radar data has not been used widely in operational flood forecasting yet. Modelling results obtained with radar derived precipitation forcing still don’t show a better skill than those obtained by using gauge observations.