Iranian Journal of Irrigation & Drainage

Iranian Journal of Irrigation & Drainage

Performance evaluation of monthly ERA5 and ERA5-Land Reanalysis precipitation data in the upstream of the Zayandehroud reservoir basin

Document Type : Original Article

Authors
faraham kazemiazar 1
Hossein Rezaie 1
Rasul Mirabbasi 2
1 Department of Water Engineering, Urmia University
2 Department of Water Engineering, Shahrekord University
Abstract
Precipitation is one of the main components of the hydrological cycle that describes the climate of the region and the amount of renewable water in the basin. However, due to the small number of rain gauge stations and their poor distribution, as well as the short length of observation data, the study of temporal and spatial variations in precipitation has been limited. With the help of reanalysis data, this limitation can be largely overcome. Assessing the accuracy of satellite precipitation products and reanalysis is very important for understanding their uncertainty and potential applications. The aim of this study is to evaluate the performance of two reanalysis datasets, ERA5 and ERA5-Land, in estimating monthly precipitation in the upstream of the Zayandehroud reservoir. The reanalysis data were compared with corresponding precipitation data measured at five stations: Fereidounshahr, Eskandari, Qale Shahrokh, Oregan and Chelgerd over a 35-year period (1988-2022). The coefficient of determination, Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency coefficient and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) statistics were used for this purpose. The results showed that the reanalysis data can generally describe the monthly patterns observed in upstream of the Zayandehroud reservoir well. However, in most cases, the reanalysis data underestimated the actual precipitation values, which was more pronounced at high-precipitation stations and in high-precipitation months. The results also showed that the accuracy of the ERA5-Land data was higher than that of ERA5 at all stations except the Chelgerd station. Given the acceptable accuracy of the monthly ERA5 and ERA5-Land precipitation data upstream of the Zayandehroud Dam, these data can be used as a suitable alternative for points without rain gauge stations in the study area or as input to the distributed rainfall-runoff models.
Keywords
Precipitation
Reanalysis data
ERA5
ERA5-Land
Zayandehroud
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Iranian Journal of Irrigation & Drainage
Volume 19, Issue 1 - Serial Number 110
March and April 2025
Pages 75-87