Development of statistical downscaling methods for the assessment of rainfall characteristics under climate change scenarios

Abstract

The objective of this research was to develop a statistical downscaling approach in the Phetchaburi River Basin, Thailand, consisting of two main processes: predictor selection and relationship construction between predictors and local rainfall. Super predictor (SP) and stepwise regression (SR) were employed with principal component analysis (PCA) and the statistical downscaling model (SDSM) was applied later. Four statistical models were finally used: M1 (SP–PCA), M2 (SP–SDSM), M3 (SR–PCA), and M4 (SR–SDSM) with 26 large circulation indices generated by CanESM2 (CMIP5). Finally, the characteristics of extreme rainfall events were observed under three climate change scenarios during three different periods (2020–2040, 2041–2070, and 2071–2100). The results revealed that rainfall and geostrophic airflow velocity were the best predictors for rainfall downscaling, followed by divergence, meridional velocity, and relative humidity. Three objective functions (R2, NSE, and RMSE) were applied to evaluate model performance. The M4 model presented the highest performance while M1 showed the lowest skill. The average annual rainfall specifically increased compared with the historical rainfall for RCP2.6, RCP4.5, and RCP8.5 scenarios in future periods. Very to extremely wet years determined by the standardized anomaly index (SAI) occurred more often in the far-future while severe to extremely dry years frequently occurred in the mid-and far-future.