Stochastic multi-site generation of daily weather data

Spatial autocorrelation is a correlation between the values of a single variable, considering their geographical locations. This concept has successfully been used for multi-site generation of daily precipitation data (Khalili et al. in J Hydrometeorol 8(3):396–412, 2007). This paper presents an extension of this approach. It aims firstly to obtain an accurate reproduction of the spatial intermittence property in synthetic precipitation amounts, and then to extend the multi-site approach to the generation of daily maximum temperature, minimum temperature and solar radiation data. Monthly spatial exponential functions have been developed for each weather station according to the spatial dependence of the occurrence processes over the watershed, in order to fulfill the spatial intermittence condition in the synthetic time series of precipitation amounts. As was the case for the precipitation processes, the multi-site generation of daily maximum temperature, minimum temperature and solar radiation data is realized using spatially autocorrelated random numbers. These random numbers are incorporated into the weakly stationary generating process, as with the Richardson weather generator, and with no modifications made. Suitable spatial autocorrelations of random numbers allow the reproduction of the observed daily spatial autocorrelations and monthly interstation correlations. The Peribonca River Basin watershed is used to test the performance of the proposed approaches. Results indicate that the spatial exponential functions succeeded in reproducing an accurate spatial intermittence in the synthetic precipitation amounts. The multi-site generation approach was successfully applied for the weather data, which were adequately generated, while maintaining efficient daily spatial autocorrelations and monthly interstation correlations.