Accessing the capability of TRMM 3B42 V7 to simulate streamflow during extreme rain events: Case study for a Himalayan River Basin

The paper examines the quality of Tropical Rainfall Monitoring Mission (TRMM) 3B42 V7 precipitation product to simulate the streamflow using Soil Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model for various rainfall intensities over the Himalayan region. The SWAT model has been set up for Gandak River Basin with 41 sub-basins and 420 HRUs. Five stream gauge locations are used to simulate the streamflow for a time span of 10 years (2000–2010). Daily streamflow for the simulation period is collected from Central Water Commission (CWC), India and Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DHM), Nepal. The simulation results are found good in terms of Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency \((\hbox {NSE}) {>}0.65\), coefficient of determination \((R^{2}) {>}0.67\) and Percentage Bias \(\hbox {(PBIAS)}{<}15\%\), at each stream gauge sites. Thereafter, we have calculated the PBIAS and RMSE-observations standard deviation ratio (RSR) statistics between TRMM simulated and observed streamflow for various rainfall intensity classes, viz., light (\({<}7.5 \, \hbox {mm}/\hbox {d}\)), moderate (7.5 to 35.4 mm/d), heavy (35.5 to 124.4 mm/d) and extremely heavy (\({>}124.4 \, \hbox {mm}/\hbox {d}\)). The PBIAS and RSR show that TRMM simulated streamflow is suitable for moderate to heavy rainfall intensities. However, it does not perform well for light- and extremely-heavy rainfall intensities. The finding of the present work is useful for the problems related to water resources management, irrigation planning and hazard analysis over the Himalayan regions.