Impacts of swat weather generator statistics from high-resolution datasets on monthly streamflow simulation over Peninsular Spain

Abstract

Study region: Peninsular Spain. Study focus: Weather data are the key drivers of hydrological modelling. However, available weather data can present gaps in data sequences and are often limited in their spatial coverage for use in such hydrological models as the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). To overcome this limitation, SWAT includes a weather generator algorithm that can complete this data based on long-term weather statistics. This work presents a newly developed weather statistics dataset for Peninsular Spain (PSWG), calculated from national gridded datasets according to the SWAT model format. PSWG provides a higher resolution that stands as a compelling alternative to the statistics calculated from the Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR) that are available on the SWAT website. New hydrological insights for the region: The dataset has been evaluated using PSWG and CFSR datasets for different data availability scenarios to reconstruct weather series in three watersheds with contrasting weather climates. Results underscore the superiority of the PSWG dataset in reconstructing missing data for hydrological simulations. This approach provides a strong alternative for SWAT applications in Peninsular Spain and the applied methodology can be replicated in other countries that dispose of high-resolution gridded rainfall and temperature datasets.