Evaluation of Three Algorithms for the Daily Hydrological Modeling of the Sarough Chai Basin Using the Satellite Precipitation Products and Applying the IHACRES Model

Due to the lack of a dense network of hydrometric stations in most basins in Iran, developing methods is necessary to estimate the daily stream flow that lead to improvement information required for water resources management. These methods usually use precipitation as the input data in most hydrological models. In order to measure precipitation as the key variable in stream flow estimation, one can employ satellite algorithms with high spatial and temporal resolutions. Among the several hydrological models suggested to simulate stream flow, IHACRES is a simple one that uses only rainfall and temperature data to achieve this objective. Daily stream flow of the Sarough-Chai River of the Zarinehrood basin was simulated using the IHACRES model with the daily rainfall gauge, temperature, and discharge data from 1988 to 2008. Then, the model was validated and calibrated using two different periods. Moreover, in order to evaluate the performance of the satellite rainfall algorithms in stream flow simulation that was the aim of this research, the daily data of PERSIANN, TMPA-3B42V7 and CMORPH products from the 2003 to 2008 period were employed as an input into the calibrated IHACRES model. Considering the indices of CC, RMSE, MAE, and RBias, the results of this research indicate that TMPA-3B42V7 performs a better in simulation of stream flow than PERSIANN and CMORPH in the study area.