Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 20, 125–141, 2016
www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/20/125/2016/
doi:10.5194/hess-20-125-2016
© Author(s) 2016. CC Attribution 3.0 License.
Spatio-temporal assessment of WRF, TRMM and in situ
precipitation data in a tropical mountain environment
(Cordillera Blanca, Peru)
L. Mourre1, T. Condom1, C. Junquas1,2, T. Lebel1, J. E. Sicart1, R. Figueroa3, and A. Cochachin4
1IRD/UGA/CNRS/G-INP, LTHE UMR 5564, Grenoble, France
2Instituto Geofísico del Perú (IGP), Lima, Peru
3UNASAM, Huaraz, Peru
4Glaciology and Water Resources Unit, National Water Authority (ANA-UGRH), Huaraz, Peru
Correspondence to: L. Mourre (lise.mourre@ujf-grenoble.fr)
Received: 5 June 2015 – Published in Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. Discuss.: 9 July 2015
Revised: 5 November 2015 – Accepted: 25 November 2015 – Published: 18 January 2016
Abstract. The estimation of precipitation over the broad
range of scales of interest for climatologists, meteorologists
and hydrologists is challenging at high altitudes of tropi-
cal regions, where the spatial variability of precipitation is
important while in situ measurements remain scarce largely
due to operational constraints. Three different types of rain-
fall products – ground based (kriging interpolation), satel-
lite derived (TRMM3B42), and atmospheric model outputs
(WRF – Weather Research and Forecasting) – are compared
for 1 hydrological year in order to retrieve rainfall patterns
at timescales ranging from sub-daily to annual over a wa-
tershed of approximately 10 000 km2 in Peru. An ensemble
of three different spatial resolutions is considered for the
comparison (27, 9 and 3 km), as long as well as a range of
timescales (annual totals, daily rainfall patterns, diurnal cy-
cle). WRF simulations largely overestimate the annual totals,
especially at low spatial resolution, while reproducing cor-
rectly the diurnal cycle and locating the spots of heavy rain-
fall more realistically than either the ground-based KED or
the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) products.
The main weakness of kriged products is the production of
annual rainfall maxima over the summit rather than on the
slopes, mainly due to a lack of in situ data above 3800 ma.s.l.
This study also confirms that one limitation of TRMM is its
poor performance over ice-covered areas because ice on the
ground behaves in a similar way as rain or ice drops in the at-
mosphere in terms of scattering the microwave energy. While
all three products are able to correctly represent the spatial
rainfall patterns at the annual scale, it not surprisingly turns
out that none of them meets the challenge of representing
both accumulated quantities of precipitation and frequency
of occurrence at the short timescales (sub-daily and daily)
required for glacio-hydrological studies in this region. It is
concluded that new methods should be used to merge vari-
ous rainfall products so as to make the most of their respec-
tive strengths.
1 Introduction: the challenge of precipitation
estimation in the tropical Peruvian Andes
Located in the north-west of Peru, the Cordillera Blanca
is the most glaciated tropical mountain range in the inter-
tropical band. The Cordillera Blanca glaciers are melting at
an unprecedented high rate (e.g., Georges, 2004; Silverio and
Jaquet, 2005; Vuille et al., 2008a, b; Bury et al., 2011), im-
pacting the whole water cycle of the region. At the seasonal
scale, the distribution of water discharge in rivers down-
stream of glaciers is changing, while at the decadal scale,
the mean annual discharge is increasing, with the prospect of
decreasing in the long run. Temperature and precipitation are
the two major forcing variables most influencing the interan-
nual variability and long-term evolution of the water balance.
A proper evaluation of these two variables is consequently a
key issue for properly predicting the future of the glaciers
and of the associated water resources.
Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union.
126 L. Mourre et al.: Assessment of WRF, TRMM and in situ precipitation data over the Cordillera Blanca, Peru
The tropics are thermally characterized by an annual vari-
ation less important than the diurnal cycle (e.g., Kaser,
1999; Baraer et al., 2012). This applies to the Cordillera
Blanca, where homogeneous thermal conditions are ob-
served throughout the year (Juen et al., 2007). For instance,
at Querococha, located in the southern part of the Cordillera
Blanca, mean monthly temperature variation is less than 1 ◦C
(Kaser et al., 2003).
By contrast, there is a strong seasonality of precipitation,
controlled by the upper air circulation, with easterly wind
transporting moisture from the Amazon plain (Aceituno,
1987) and westerly flow causing dry conditions due to the
Humboldt Current (Garreaud et al., 2003). This results in two
distinct seasons: the wet season from October to April with
an average of 80 % of the annual precipitation (Vuille et al.,
2008a), and the dry season from May to August. The wet
season corresponds to the South American Monsoon System
(SAMS) (e.g., Vera et al., 2006; Garreaud, 2009; Marengo
et al., 2012), bringing humidity far to the west. The dry sea-
son is associated with the North American Monsoon Sys-
tem, the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) being lo-
cated as its northernmost position. The inter-annual variabil-
ity of rainfall is important in relation to the fluctuations of the
sea surface temperature (SST) of the North Atlantic and the
El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) (e.g., Espinoza Villar
et al., 2009; Lavado Casimiro et al., 2012; Lavado Casimiro
and Espinoza, 2014). According to Lavado Casimiro and Es-
pinoza (2014), the Rio Santa catchment belongs to an area
where positive precipitation anomalies are observed during
strong Niño as well as during strong Niña events.
The rainfall climatology is also characterized by strong
spatial gradients at all temporal scales. First of all, the main
annual rainfall pattern between 5 and 30◦ S is the contrast
between the dry and cold conditions on the Pacific coast,
stretching to the western slopes of the Andes, and the warm,
humid and rainy conditions prevailing on the eastern slopes
(Garreaud, 2009). This results in high precipitation amounts
on the windward slopes of the Andes in easterly flows sit-
uations (up to 6000 mmyr−1) and much smaller precipita-
tion amounts on the leeward side, even at high altitudes (un-
der 530 mmyr−1) between 5◦ N and 20◦ S (Espinoza Villar
et al., 2009). Superimposed onto this large-scale spatial pat-
tern, the influence of the topography becomes more and more
important when considering smaller temporal scales at which
convective and orographic processes have a deep influence.
Rainfall hotspots, heavy rainfall gradients over a few kilome-
ters and flash floods (Young and Leon, 2009; Espinoza et al.,
2015) are the most prominent hydro-meteorological patterns
induced by the rough topography of the region.
Another issue arises from the high altitude, meaning that
a significant amount of precipitation falls as snow over
4800 ma.s.l. This requires one to measure reliably both the
solid and liquid precipitation all year around, something that
is far from granted and that remains a major difficulty in
mountain hydrology.
The estimation of precipitation over the broad range of
scales of interest for climatologists, meteorologists and hy-
drologists is thus especially challenging in this region char-
acterized by very uncommon geographical features. And yet
socio-economic stakes are high as far as potentially drastic
changes of the water cycle related to precipitation variabil-
ity and long-term changes are concerned, affecting access
to drinkable water in urban areas, the yields of agricultural
projects and the operation of numerous hydroelectric power
plants.
The driving question of this study is to identify and com-
pare the precipitation data sets that can be used for properly
characterizing the water balance over catchments of the re-
gion from sub-daily to yearly temporal scales. Both the ac-
cumulated quantities of precipitation and the frequency of
occurrence have to be properly estimated if one is to com-
pute coherent water budgets over this large range of temporal
scales, an accomplishment that no single precipitation data
set can pretend to achieve on its own.
Each precipitation data set has its own strength and weak-
ness. Starting with ground data, their main shortcoming –
beyond their key advantage of being the only direct mea-
surement of rainfall – is a poor sampling of the spatial vari-
ability that is especially important in mountainous regions
(Scheel et al., 2011). This is compounded by the difficulty
of installing and maintaining ground stations in a harsh envi-
ronment, making whole areas very difficult to access (Salz-
mann et al., 2013; Schwarb et al., 2011). Rain gauges are
thus most often available in the vicinity of villages, meaning
that non-habited areas are virtually not sampled, especially at
high altitudes, where distinguishing between liquid and solid
precipitation is a major issue.
On their side, satellite rainfall products provide the global
coverage that is lacking for ground data sets. However, the
early satellite rainfall products elaborated in the mid-1980s
were solely based on infrared data, affecting their accuracy
in the case of convective rainfall and, more generally, in the
presence of a strong rainfall gradient. The most recent prod-
ucts now make use of various sources of information, blend-
ing infrared and microwave satellite data and often incorpo-
rating ground data, which make them more performant in
spotting the patches of intense rainfall. It remains that there
are still significant differences between the most commonly
used satellite rainfall products, especially in the tropics and
for orographically forced rainfall (Ward et al., 2011). This
means that the ability of these satellite products to fulfill
user’s expectations must be scrutinized on a case-by-case ba-
sis. Note also that satellite products are rather weak in distin-
guishing between liquid and solid precipitation.
In the perspective of quantifying the spatial and temporal
variability of water budgets over catchments, another possi-
bility for providing the required rainfall component is to use
the precipitation produced by climate models. This presents
two main advantages: (i) the physical coherency of the vari-
ous elements of the water budgets computed by these models
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 20, 125–141, 2016 www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/20/125/2016/
L. Mourre et al.: Assessment of WRF, TRMM and in situ precipitation data over the Cordillera Blanca, Peru 127
and (ii) the possibility of studying the evolution of the water
budgets in the future in a context of global warming. Note,
however, that global climate models usually fail to simulate
properly the regional processes and their spatial variability,
especially for precipitation in mountainous areas, a default
particularly critical in the Andes due to their complex topog-
raphy (Giovannettone and Barros, 2009). To remedy these
limitations, downscaling approaches based on the nesting of
regional climate models (RCM) into global models is fre-
quently used. The performance of nested regional models de-
pends on the study area, the spatial resolution and the param-
eterization used (Box and Bromwich, 2004), which means
that their added value, as compared to the other sources of
rainfall information, should also be considered on a case-by-
case basis.
2 Study area and data
2.1 Study area
Draining an area of 11 930 km2 located between 8 and 10◦ S
and 79 and 77◦W, the Rio Santa runs northward, between the
Cordillera Negra to the west and the Cordillera Blanca to the
east (Mark and Seltzer, 2003), before making its way to the
Pacific; 41 % of the catchment area is above 4000 ma.s.l., in-
cluding the highest point of the cordillera, Huascaran, peak-
ing at 6768 ma.s.l. (Fig. 1). The upper Rio Santa catch-
ment, with an outlet at Condorcerro, drains an area of about
10 000 km2, and will be our main study area.
Some modeling projections based on the mean of mete-
orological variables from four GCM grid points predict the
disappearance of ice cover for 2080 in some sub-watersheds
of the Rio Santa (Juen et al., 2007), which would have a sig-
nificant impact on the flow regime of the river, since glaciers
meltwater regulates its annual flow. For a sub-watershed of
the upper Rio Santa watershed (4700 km2, 8 % glaciated),
glacier meltwater currently provides 10–20 % of the annual
rate, and up to 40 % in the dry season (Kaser et al., 2003;
Mark and Seltzer, 2003; Baraer et al., 2012; Condom et al.,
2012).
The larger studied area is a rectangle of 84 000 km2
(Fig. 1). It can be divided into four hydrological sub-regions
from the north-east to the south-west. The Rio Marañon
catchment is located on the Amazon side, where the highest
yearly precipitated amount was measured in situ during the
hydrological year 2012–2013 (> 1100 mmyr−1). The sec-
ond sub-region is the western side of the Cordillera Blanca,
draining into the Pacific. Stations in this area are located
inside the Rio Santa catchment. In situ measured precip-
itation amounts in the Cordillera Blanca area range from
478 to 1000 mmyr−1 (Table 1 and Fig. 1). The third re-
gion is the Cordillera Negra, which is much drier (from 44
to 434 mmyr−1) and lower in altitude (Table 1 and Fig. 1).
This zone includes all stations located west of the Rio Santa
Altitude  
[m] 
Figure 1. Location of the upper Santa watershed (the star marks out-
let Condorcerro). Color dots indicate annual precipitation amounts
at in situ stations. White dots correspond to stations with missing
data. The Huascaran peak is indicated, as well as the Rio Marañon
watershed. Topography is from SRTM (http://srtm.csi.cgiar.org/).
riverbed, up from 3625 ma.s.l. to an altitude of 1000 ma.s.l.
Finally, the dry area near the Pacific Ocean, named Costa,
is defined as the land area whose altitude ranges from 0 to
1000 ma.s.l. The topography data shown in Fig. 1 are from
STRM (90 m resolution). While we will be looking at the en-
tire 84 000 km2 region, our analysis is focused on the precip-
itation falling over the upper Santa watershed, because this is
our region of interest from a hydrological standpoint and be-
cause it is where we have the best ground network coverage.
2.2 In situ data
It was not an easy task to gather data from a sufficiently
large number of stations in order to properly document our
study area. First of all, there was the need to obtain some
background climatological information; 10 stations operated
by the Servicio Nacional de Meteorología e Hidrología de
Perú (SENAMHI) since 1965 (Table 1) allow computation of
monthly and yearly long-term averages. However, their spe-
cific location and loose spatial sampling prevent one from es-
timating correctly the long-term average rainfall either over
the upper Rio Santa catchment or over the whole study area.
Data from an additional set of eight SENAMHI stations
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128 L. Mourre et al.: Assessment of WRF, TRMM and in situ precipitation data over the Cordillera Blanca, Peru
Table 1. Information on in situ rainfall stations. Under “Location”, CB means Cordillera Blanca, CN means Cordillera Negra, M means
Marañon, and C means Costa. [NS] indicates stations used for the study along the Rio Santa Valley. [H] indicates stations used for the
transect along the Huascaran peak. ∗ indicates stations used to calculate the precipitation index (data from 1965) (Sect. 2.2). Precipitation
(mmyr−1) during the hydrological year 2012–2013 is indicated at each rain gauge station for in situ data (Obs), TRMM and WRF (WRF27,
WRF9 and WRF3). Accu indicates the value for glacier accumulation over the year.
UNASAM no. Lon. Lat. Alt. (m) Situation Obs TRMM WRF27 WRF9 WRF3
2 [NS] −77.9 −8.6 3172 CB 542 407 2173 1517 1225
6 −77.2 −8.9 2786 M 577 671 3377 1090 1716
7 −77.8 −9.1 2350 CB 478 307 4219 997 796
9 −78.4 −9.2 125 C 31 107 121 214 341
10 −77.4 −9.2 3770 M 1162 271 2758 2421 2821
11 [H] −77.7 −9.2 2500 CB 598 1596 4219 1000 849
12 [NS] −77.6 −9.2 3040 CB 738 1596 2758 1073 1145
14 −78.2 −9.5 133 C 14 158 121 182 338
15 −77.5 −9.3 3480 M 1028 558 2558 3472 3948
16 [NS] −77.5 −9.5 3091 CB 666 434 4625 1663 1025
18 −77.4 −9.5 3850 CB – 1674 4625 3168 2513
28 −78.1 −10.1 18 C 8 78 49 102 250
29 −77.1 −10.1 3405 CB 624 381 1861 1664 3069
32 −77.4 −10.4 3268 CN 307 523 2203 1990 2860
SENAMHI no. Lon. Lat. Alt. (m) Situation Obs TRMM WRF27 WRF9 WRF3
1 −78.0 −8.4 3160 CB 972 343 2502 1498 1373
3∗ −77.6 −8.6 3375 M 959 437 2173 1651 1483
4 [H] −77.5 −8.8 3605 M 1030 530 2758 2248 2160
8 −77.7 −9.1 2527 CB 744 307 4219 1000 719
13 −78.2 −9.4 216 C 28 158 121 219 396
16 −77.5 −9.5 3079 CB 634 434 4625 1663 1025
19∗ −77.8 −9.5 2285 CN 251 233 1320 797 761
20 −77.9 −9.5 1260 CN 91 234 710 502 528
21∗ −77.7 −9.6 3625 CN 668 434 4348 1800 1169
22∗ −77.7 −9.6 3325 CN – 434 4348 1524 1310
23∗ −77.2 −10.1 3137 M 687 790 2402 2456 3289
25∗ −77.4 −9.7 3444 CB 756 790 4348 1942 1541
26∗ −77.6 −9.8 3440 CN – 358 4348 1705 973
27∗ −77.2 −9.9 4400 CB – 645 3413 2684 3922
29∗ −77.2 −10.1 3382 CB 620 381 1861 1678 3069
30 −77.4 −10.2 3200 CN – 329 1861 837 1867
31 −77.5 −9.6 1221 CN 44 192 499 454 662
32∗ −77.4 −10.4 3230 CN 383 271 1861 1255 1586
UGRH no. Lon. Lat. Alt. (m) Situation Obs TRMM WRF27 WRF9 WRF3
5 [H] −77.6 −9.0 5100 CB Accu: 1006 545 4188 3010 2922
17 −77.4 −9.5 4281 CB – 1674 3215 2691 2479
24 −77.3 −9.6 4955 CB Accu: 1000 790 3215 2809 3894
cover the period August 2012 to July 2013 at a daily reso-
lution. We also had access to three stations from the Unidad
de Glaciología y Recursos Hídricos (UGRH) from the Au-
toridad Nacional de Agua (ANA). These stations are of a tip-
ping bucket type; they have the double advantage of being
located at higher altitudes and of providing data at sub-daily
time steps. As compared to previous studies in this region,
the key new information used comes from a database of 16
meteorological stations with hourly data located in the An-
cash region of Peru. They were installed in the framework of
a project (Centro de Información e Investigación Ambiental
de Desarrollo Regional Sostenible – CIIADERS), operated
by the Universidad Nacional Santiago Antúñez de Mayolo
(UNASAM) of Huaraz. These stations provide essential in-
formation for understanding the spatial (increased sampling
density) and temporal (hourly resolution) distribution of pre-
cipitation within our study area. The SENAMHI data are rou-
tinely quality controlled, using standard procedures in use in
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 20, 125–141, 2016 www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/20/125/2016/
L. Mourre et al.: Assessment of WRF, TRMM and in situ precipitation data over the Cordillera Blanca, Peru 129
the Met services worldwide. For the UGRH and UNASAM
data, we had to carry out our own quality check, for instance
by comparing precipitation amounts reported by stations lo-
cated in the same area, leading to the removal of errant val-
ues.
Unfortunately the CIIADERS network has been in oper-
ation since 2012 only, limiting this study to 1 hydrological
year (August 2012 to July 2013). The average pluviomet-
ric index of this 1-year study period, which corresponds to
a reduced centered anomaly, is close to 0 (0.0774), meaning
that the annual precipitation is close to the mean precipita-
tion of the 1965–2014 period as calculated from 10 long-
term stations among our total of 37. Note also that stations
with more than 25 % of missing data during that year have
been removed, leaving only 32 stations available to compute
our ground-based rainfall grids (Table 1 and Fig. 1).
A weakness of this 32-station network is the lack of
data for the dry Cordillera Negra and the high-altitude ar-
eas of the Cordillera Blanca (only three stations located
above 3800 ma.s.l.). This shortcoming was partly overcome
by using accumulation data provided by the UGRH for the
Artesonraju and Yanamarey glaciers at near 5000 ma.s.l.,
which are net accumulations during 1 year, including solid
precipitation and melting over the period. Concerning snow,
it is important to keep in mind that the rainy season occurs
during austral summer, when temperature is slightly higher
and consequently few solid precipitations are observed un-
der 4600 ma.s.l. (Condom et al., 2011).
2.3 Gridded precipitation from in situ data
A major problem when comparing precipitation data sets
from different sources relates to their different spatial sam-
pling. Satellite and atmospheric model data are provided
as gridded products, while rain gauges provide point data.
A spatial interpolation procedure is thus required to get each
product on the same grid. There is a considerable amount
of literature on selecting an appropriate interpolation method
for computing rain grids from point data. This is an espe-
cially tricky problem in regions of rough topography.
Several studies showed that kriging with external drift
(KED), using altitude as an external variable, provides good
results over complex terrains (e.g., Masson and Frei, 2014;
Tobin et al., 2011; Ochoa et al., 2014). Block kriging with
altitude as an external drift was thus chosen here as our ref-
erence interpolation method – note however that other types
of kriging interpolators were tested, but a cross-validation
evaluation showed KED to be the most efficient of all in our
case. While accounting for the strong influence of topogra-
phy on the structure of rain fields is crucial in mountainous
regions, another issue arises from the type of variogram to be
used and whether it is allowed to vary from day to day. Re-
lated to this topic, different concepts of spatio-temporal krig-
ing have been tested in previous studies (Amani and Lebel,
1997; Vischel et al., 2011; Gräler at al., 2012). Daily evolving
variograms assume the hypothesis of a relationship between
precipitation amounts of days D and D− 1, and information
from the previous days is considered with a weight chosen by
the user (10 % is used in this study). This is the method that
was finally chosen to compute daily gridded precipitation at
27 km, 9 km and 3 km spatial resolutions, thus matching the
resolution of the satellite and Weather Research and Fore-
casting (WRF) model products that will be presented below
in Sects. 2.4 and 2.5.
2.4 TRMM product
Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Multi-
Satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA) products have
been available since 1998. This study makes use of the
TRMM3B42 version 7 product, which provides precipitation
data at a 3 h time step from a combination of remote sensing
observations (microwave imager, precipitation radar, visible
and infrared scanner) and monthly in situ observations (Huff-
man et al., 2007; Huffman and Bolvin, 2012). This prod-
uct will simply be referred to as TRMM in the rest of the
study. The TRMM data set covers a region between 50◦ S
and 50◦ N, with a spatial resolution of 0.25◦ (approximately
27 km) (Table 3). This product can be used for hydrological
application in regions with scarce in situ data. Even though
the TRMM mission was focused on the monitoring of tropi-
cal rainfall, it suffers from a number of drawbacks, the main
one being its poor time sampling reduced to one or two pas-
sages per day depending on the area considered. This causes
a significant loss of information for short-duration storms
(Roca et al., 2010; Condom et al., 2011; Ward et al., 2011).
The effect of these time sampling errors are reduced when
aggregating in time (Scheel et al., 2011; Mantas et al., 2014),
but TRMM products still show significant biases in monthly
values in the tropical Andes (Condom et al., 2011) as well as
in solid precipitation (Maussion et al., 2014).
2.5 WRF simulation
In this study we use the high-resolution simulations from the
WRF model version 3.4.1 (Skamarock et al., 2008) that had
only a few applications in the tropical Andes (Murthi et al.,
2011; Ochoa et al., 2014; Sanabria et al., 2014). The WRF
is a nonhydrostatic model and uses a terrain-following verti-
cal coordinate (sigma). The limited domain simulations are
forced by a boundary condition every 6 h by the National
Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Final Analy-
ses (FNL) Global Forecast System (GFS) with 1◦ of latitude
and longitude horizontal resolution. The elevation data set
is from the USGS GTOPO30. A large tropical Andes do-
main was first delimited for simulations at a 27 km resolu-
tion (WRF27). Two sub-domains were then used for carry-
ing out simulations at a 9 km (WRF9) and 3 km (WRF3) res-
olution, respectively, both being centered in the Santa River
basin (Tables 2, 3). WRF9 (WRF3) simulations are forced
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130 L. Mourre et al.: Assessment of WRF, TRMM and in situ precipitation data over the Cordillera Blanca, Peru
[mm yr-1] 
Figure 2. Annual precipitation (mmyr−1) from TRMM2B31 for
the hydrological year 2012–2013 (August 2012–July 2013). The
three boxes indicate the WRF simulation domain: box 1 for 27km×
27 km; box 2 for 9km× 9km; box 3 for 3km× 3km. Topography
contours are displayed every 500 m.
by the WRF27 (WRF9) simulations using a one-way nesting
technique. The simulations begin on April 2012, the first 4
months being used as a spin-up period for producing 1 year
of data to be compared to the KED and TRMM products.
Figure 2 shows the boxes corresponding to each simula-
tion domain, and Table 2 lists the resolutions and coordinates
of each configuration. Table 3 lists the parameterizations
used in the simulations. We use the Thompson microphys-
ical scheme (Thompson et al., 2008) and the Grell–Devenyi
ensemble scheme for the cumulus parameterization. We also
use a topographic correction for surface winds, previously
tested in a complex orographic terrain of the Iberian Penin-
sula (Jimenez and Dudhia, 2012). The Noah-MP (Multi-
Physics) land surface model is used for the representation
of land–atmosphere interaction processes (Niu et al., 2011;
Yang et al., 2011). Noah-MP is an extended version of the
Noah land surface model with enhanced Multi-Physics op-
tion to address critical shortcomings in Noah for long-term
soil state spin-up and snow modeling. In particular, this ver-
sion of the Noah model has shown improvements in the rep-
resentation of surface energy fluxes, snow cover and snow
albedo treatment. The partitioning of precipitation into rain-
fall and snowfall was set to option 2 (opt_snf= 2) using the
Biosphere–Atmosphere Transfer Scheme, which assumes all
precipitation as snowfall when the air temperature is lower
than the freezing point plus 2.2 K, and rainfall otherwise.
The overestimation of precipitation is a frequent bias in
numerical models (e.g., Mearns et al., 1995), particularly in
complex orographic regions. Preliminary tests of sensitiv-
ity with various WRF parameterizations (including different
cumulus schemes, cloud microphysics, planetary boundary
layer and land surface options) have been done in the tropical
Andes at a 27 km horizontal resolution; a clear overestima-
tion of precipitation was observed with all these configura-
tions and over all the domain, including the high mountain ar-
eas. The biases found with other configurations were almost
similar to those of the configuration selected here in terms
of the precipitation spatial distribution, and with quantitative
differences more pronounced in the eastern slopes of the An-
des and in the Amazon region rather than in high mountain
zones like the Cordillera Blanca. The configuration finally
retained for this study (Table 2) has been selected because
(i) it minimizes the positive precipitation bias in the tropical
Andes above 3500 ma.s.l., and (ii) it simulates correctly the
spatial distribution of the precipitation in the region, includ-
ing the zones of maximum precipitation situated in the Ama-
zon basin and on the eastern slopes of the Andes (Fig. 2),
when compared with the TRMM2B31 data. At 3 km resolu-
tion, the Noah-MP option was found to decrease the precip-
itation overestimation in the Cordillera Blanca and show a
more realistic snow distribution when compared with previ-
ous observations.
3 Methods and criteria used for comparing the rainfall
products
A total of seven gridded rainfall products are compared here,
as described in Table 4. These products differ from one
another on two accounts: (i) the type of information used
(ground data, satellite data, atmospheric model), (ii) the spa-
tial resolution, ranging from 27 km corresponding to the size
of the TRMM satellite product grid mesh, down to 3 km, the
finest resolution at which the WRF model was run. These
seven gridded products are available at the daily scale, which
is the corner scale for the comparison carried out in this pa-
per. While TRMM products and WRF simulations are inher-
ently gridded, in situ data need to be interpolated in order to
build grids at the three spatial resolutions: 27, 9 and 3 km.
3.1 Computation of daily precipitation grids from in
situ data
The performance of the KED outputs is determined based on
a “leave-one-out” cross-validation procedure (Li and Heap,
2008). It consists in leaving aside one measurement point at
a time and estimating the value at that point from the remain-
ing 31 stations. The procedure is applied successively to each
of the 32 measurement stations, allowing one to compute the
bias (Eq. 1), the root mean square error (RMSE) score (Eq. 2)
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 20, 125–141, 2016 www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/20/125/2016/
L. Mourre et al.: Assessment of WRF, TRMM and in situ precipitation data over the Cordillera Blanca, Peru 131
Table 2. Characteristics of the WRF simulations at the three different spatial scales.
WRF27 WRF9 WRF3
Horizontal resolution (km) 27 9 3
Domain Tropical Andes Rio Santa region Rio Santa watershed
Domain center coordinates 8◦30′ S, 72◦W 9◦1′4′′ S, 77◦37′53′′W 9◦11′25′′ S, 77◦43′7′′W
Configuration Regional simulation One-way nesting One-way nesting
Forcing NCEP_FNL WRF27 WRF9
Vertical resolution 27 sigma levels 27 sigma levels 27 sigma levels
Run time step (s) 150 50 6
Output time resolution (h) 6 3 1
Table 3. List of the physical parameterizations used in the WRF simulations.
Parameterizations References
Clouds microphysics New Thompson scheme Thompson et al. (2008)
Radiation Longwave: Rapid Radiative Transfer Model (RRTM) Mlawer et al. (1997)
Shortwave: Dudhia scheme Dudhia (1989)
Cumulus parameterization Grell–Devenyi ensemble scheme Grell and Devenyi (2002)
Planetary boundary layer Yonsei University scheme Hong et al. (2006)
Wind topographic correction (option 1) Jimenez and Dudhia (2012)
Land surface Noah-MP (Multi-Physics) partitioning Niu et al. (2011);
precipitation option 2 Yang et al. (2011)
Surface layer MM5 similarity Paulson (1970)
and the correlation coefficient, as follows:
bias=
n∑
i=1
m∑
d=1
(Pˆi,d−Pi,d), (1)
RMSE=
m∑
d=1
√
1
n
∑n
i=1(Pˆi,d−Pi,d)2, (2)
where Pˆi,d is the daily precipitation estimated at point i for
day d , using all the other gauges, Pi,d is the corresponding
measured daily rainfall, n is the number of stations (32 when
there are no missing data on day d) and m is the number of
days studied.
In the following, the gridded daily precipitation prod-
uct at 27, 9, and 3 km spatial resolutions will, respectively,
be referred to as KED27, KED9 and KED3 (see Table 4
and Fig. 3). The daily RMSE value is large (3.41 mmd−1)
compared to the mean daily precipitation over all stations
(1.85 mmd−1), and errors are reduced with aggregation on
a yearly basis (RMSE of 271 mmyr−1 for an average in situ
amount of 572 mm y−1 for the 32 stations and a correlation
coefficient of 0.78). In yearly values, kriging products will
then be the basis of our comparison to TRMM data and WRF
outputs. Despite some bias in the estimation of annual and
daily rainfall, it is assumed that the most important spatial
pattern is captured by KED.
3.2 Comparing the daily and annual precipitation
products
Daily precipitation is defined as the accumulation of rainfall
between 00:00:00 LT (local time) and 23:59:00 LT. An im-
portant point is that all gridded products suffer from weak-
ness and, thus, the aim of the comparison is to analyze dif-
ferences between products. The daily products are compared
from three different standpoints: the statistical distribution of
non-zero rainfall, the grid annual values and the seasonal cy-
cle.
The frequency of daily precipitation at one location (one
station or the corresponding grid mesh) was studied through
the cumulative distribution function of the non-zero precipi-
tation (Sambou, 2004):
f (x)=−log10(1−F (x)), (3)
where F(x) is the cumulative frequency of the daily precipi-
tation amount above 1 mmd−1 and x is the daily precipitation
(mmd−1).
To assess the statistical performance of the 3 km resolution
products against punctual in situ data at a daily timescale,
the contingency table for rainfall/no rainfall was built (Ta-
ble 5). The bias score (BIAS – ratio of the number of rainy
days simulated (A+B) over the number of rainy days ob-
served (A+C)), false alarm rate (FAR – ratio of the number
of rainy days incorrectly simulated (B) over the total number
of rainy days simulated (A+B)), probability of false detec-
tion (POFD – ratio of the number of rainy days incorrectly
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132 L. Mourre et al.: Assessment of WRF, TRMM and in situ precipitation data over the Cordillera Blanca, Peru
Table 4. Precipitation data used in this study, with their spatial and temporal resolutions, and the accumulated amount precipitated over the
upper Rio Santa watershed during the hydrological year 2012–2013. WRF and KED (corresponding to kriging data with external drift – daily
evolving variogram) are at three different spatial resolutions (27, 9 and 3 km). TRMM is the TRMM3B42 product.
Product Spatial Temporal resolution used in this study Annual precipitation
resolution Hourly Daily Yearly over the watershed (m)
In situ Punctual x x –
KED27 27km× 27km x x 0.83
KED9 9km× 9km x x 1.01
KED3 3km× 3km x x 0.95
WRF27 27km× 27km x x 2.91
WRF9 9km× 9km x x 1.95
WRF3 3km× 3km x x x 1.97
TRMM 27km× 27km x x 0.57
−78.5 −78 −77.5 −77
−10
−9.5
−9
−8.5
−8
KED27
Longitude
−78.5 −78 −77.5 −77
KDE9
Longitude
−78.5 −78 −77.5 −77
 
Longitude
KDE3
 
P 
[m
m 
yr−
1 ]
0
500
1000
1500
−78.5 −78 −77.5 −77
−10
−9.5
−9
−8.5
−8
 
 
Longitude
La
tit
ud
e
Cross validation residual
[m
m 
yr−
1 ]
−200
−100
0
100
200
(a)
Ocean Ocean
(b3)(b2)
Ocean
(b1)
Ocean
Figure 3. (a) Cross-validation residuals with in situ yearly precipitation amount. (b) Annual precipitation amount from KED interpolations at
27 (b1), 9 (b2) and 3 km (b3) spatial resolutions. Delimitation of the upper Rio Santa watershed is indicated in bold gray lines. The coastline
is also indicated in black.
Table 5. Contingency table used to assess the statistical perfor-
mances of the 3 km resolution products against punctual in situ data
at a daily timescale. The B value corresponds for example to a day
with no precipitation in the in situ data and precipitation > thresh-
old mmd−1 in the 3 km grid product.
In situ
Pj Yes No
3 km grid Yes A B
Product No C D
simulated (B) over the number of days without rain in the
observations (B +D)) and the frequently used Heidke skill
score (HSS) (Eqs. 4–6) were calculated.
HSS= S− Sref
1− Sref , (4)
S = A+D
N
, (5)
Sref = (A+B)(A+C)+ (B +D)(C+D)
N2
, (6)
where N is the size of the statistical population, and A, B, C
and D values are explained in Table 5.
A perfect product would have a BIAS of 1, a FAR of 0,
a POFD of 0 and a HSS of 1.
Annual grids were computed by temporal aggregation of
the daily grids. In the aim to study the water balance for
the purpose of hydrological applications, each product was
evaluated in terms of volume of water precipitated over the
area of the upper Rio Santa watershed, corresponding to the
watershed limited by the outlet at Condorcerro (Fig. 1).
Finally, to evaluate the seasonal cycle of precipitation in
one site, we used the temporal standard score St (Eq. 7):
St = Pj
10−〈Pj 〉
σj
, (7)
where Pj
10 is the running means of daily precipitation
amounts over 10 days in one location, and 〈Pj 〉 and σj are
the temporal average and standard deviation of the daily pre-
cipitation, respectively.
It is important to mention that when comparing the perfor-
mances at one location of the KED daily products with those
of the TRMM and WRF, use is made of the cross-validation
products, so that the local information is not taken into ac-
count, which would artificially benefit the ground product
with respect to the satellite and model products.
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 20, 125–141, 2016 www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/20/125/2016/
L. Mourre et al.: Assessment of WRF, TRMM and in situ precipitation data over the Cordillera Blanca, Peru 133
3.3 Assessing the quality of the WRF3 hourly
precipitation grids
To facilitate the comparison among all stations, the hourly
precipitation amounts were normalized by dividing them by
the mean of hourly values during the year. Few studies deal
with hourly rainfall amounts from WRF modeling. In this
study, we compared the timing of the precipitation peak from
hourly rain gauge data and from WRF3 simulation outputs.
Studying hourly data allowed us to see whether short time
processes governing precipitation in the Rio Santa Valley are
well represented in WRF3, considering in situ hourly mea-
surement as the reference.
4 Results
4.1 Frequency and intensities of daily precipitation
amounts
In this section, we first analyze the statistics of daily precipi-
tation and the temporal scale for which all eight products are
available (Table 4), and present them for the Corongo loca-
tion (no. 2 in Table 1 and Fig. 1). This station, located in the
northern part of the Rio Santa watershed, was selected be-
cause it is representative of the 16 stations located inside the
upper Rio Santa catchment in terms of the precipitation areal
averaging effect, except when comparing the differences be-
tween the three different spatial-resolution products of WRF.
In a second part, we studied daily precipitation occurrences
based on the contingency table indices (see Sect. 3.2, Table 5)
for all stations located in the Sierra area.
Figure 4 shows the cumulative frequency of daily precip-
itation above 1 mm d−1 for the Corongo location comparing
(i) the three spatial resolutions of WRF (Fig. 4a), (ii) compar-
ing the three spatial resolutions of KED (Fig. 4b), (iii) com-
paring TRMM, WRF and KED products at 27 km (Fig. 4c),
and (iv) comparing WRF and KED products at 3 km spatial
resolution vs. in situ punctual data (Fig. 4d). The number in
the box of each graph represents the number of days with pre-
cipitation over 1 mmd−1 (np>1) for each product. Regarding
KED data, the three spatial resolutions have a few differences
that can also be seen in the number of np>1 (Fig. 4b). Con-
cerning the 27 km spatial resolution, KED27 and TRMM are
more similar to each other compared to WRF27 (Fig. 4c),
despite an underestimation of np>1 for TRMM (108 days)
compared to KED27 (183 days). WRF3, as WRF27 (Fig. 4c
and d), does not correctly report daily precipitation amounts,
with stronger values compared to the other data sets. In this
comparison, KED3 seems to underestimate daily precipita-
tion amounts and overestimate np>1 in light of in situ data,
but this can be related to a resolution effect between the 3 km
resolution grid and punctual measurement.
Noting that WRF products are unrealistic in terms of daily
precipitated quantities, we will now evaluate their perfor-
mances in terms of occurrence, a notion that is essential in
glacio-hydrological studies. This can be seen in the results
of the contingency table and is studied by comparing KED3
and WRF3 with in situ data for different daily precipitation
thresholds in Fig. 5. The results are shown for the Sierra re-
gion, but are similar for the Cordillera Negra and Marañon
areas.
WRF3 largely overestimates the amount of strong daily
precipitation, which can be linked to the overestimation of
the product (Fig. 4d). The FAR, POFD and HSS show that
there is an important improvement considering only precipi-
tation above 1 mmd−1 in KED3 and that the amount of daily
precipitation between 0 and 1 mmd−1 is largely overesti-
mated by this product (Fig. 5b–d). POFD can be seen as
an inter-comparison indicator as it does not depend on the
number of predicted events. Above 1 mmd−1, KED3 is then
a better estimator of precipitation occurrence compared to
WRF3. However, we faced the same spatial-resolution prob-
lem as above when comparing the 3 km mesh grid and in
situ data for low-precipitation amounts. HSS indicates that
daily precipitation in KED3 is in better accordance with in
situ data than WRF3, with a few rainy days well predicted
in WRF3. Although we noted a spatial-resolution effect for
daily precipitation quantities under 1 mmd−1, KED3 appears
to be a good estimate of precipitation in terms of daily aver-
age quantities and occurrences, and will be considered later
as a basis for comparison between different gridded products.
4.2 Annual amount and seasonal cycle
4.2.1 Annual cumulated precipitation amounts during
the hydrological year 2012–2013
The estimations of the annual precipitation over the upper
Rio Santa catchment (about 10 000 km2) for the 27 km res-
olution products, range from 570 mmyr−1 for TRMM to
2910 mmyr−1 for WRF27 (and 830 mmyr−1 for KED27)
(Table 4). Thus, even at this large integrative scale, the 27 km
products display large discrepancies. KED annual rainfall is
15 % larger at the 3 km resolution (950 mmyr−1) compared
to the 27 km resolution, while it is a diminution of 30 % for
WRF (1970 vs. 2910 mmyr−1). Figure 6 shows those an-
nual precipitation amounts for all different products used in
this study. Even though the KED3 estimate is certainly not
devoid of bias, it is clear that WRF overestimates rainfall.
WRF products, compared to KED, show more spatial vari-
ability in precipitation amounts at both 3 and 9 km resolu-
tions, with stronger altitudinal gradient. TRMM and KED27
are closer along the Rio Santa Valley, as they both incorpo-
rate rain gauge data. However, on the Marañon watershed
side, TRMM integrates the tropospheric flows from the Ama-
zonian lowlands compared to KED27, whose ground obser-
vations are undersampled over this area, not catching the
rainfall effect of the moisture influx from the Amazon basin.
Although coarse-resolution products (TRMM and WRF27)
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134 L. Mourre et al.: Assessment of WRF, TRMM and in situ precipitation data over the Cordillera Blanca, Peru
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
−
lo
g1
0 
(1−
F)
−−−−−−   WRF  data   −−−−−−
 
 
WRF27 : 224 days
WRF9 : 118 days
WRF3 : 113 days
0 5 10 15 20
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
−
lo
g1
0 
(1−
F)
−−−−−−   KED  data   −−−−−−−
 
 
KED27 : 183 days
KED9 : 184 days
KED3 : 187 days
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
−
lo
g1
0 
(1−
F)
P>1mm [mm d−1]
−−−   27−km spatial resolution   −−−
 
 
TRMM : 108 days
KED27 : 183 days
WRF27 : 224 days
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
−
lo
g1
0 
(1−
F)
P>1mm [mm d−1]
−−−   3−km spatial resolution   −−−
 
 
In Situ : 108 days
KED3 : 187 days
WRF3 : 113 days
(a)
(c) (d)
(b)
Figure 4. Frequency diagram of Corongo (station n◦2) of daily precipitation data> 1 mm d−1 for WRF outputs (a) and KED products (b) at
three different spatial resolutions, and for all products at 27 km (c) and 3 km spatial resolution (d). Numbers in the bottom right corner
indicate the number of days with precipitation > 1 mmd−1 for each data set.
0 5 10 15
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
H
S
S
Thresholdc[mm]
(d)
0 5 10 15
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
P
O
FD
Thresholdc[mm]
(c)
0 5 10 15
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
FA
R
(b)
0 5 10 15
0
5
10
15
B
IA
S
(a)
KED3
WRF3
Figure 5. Daily precipitation indices: BIAS (a), false alarm rate (b),
probability of false detection (c) and Heidke skill score (d). Calcu-
lated for KED3 (black) and WRF3 (gray) against rain gauge precip-
itation data located in the Sierra area. Scores have been evaluated
for several daily precipitation thresholds: 0.1, 0.5, 1, 3, 5, 10 and
15 mm.
do not provide acceptable rainfall grids for hydrological ap-
plications in complex topography area because of their lack
of representation of the finer spatial pattern, they are not to-
tally useless at this annual scale. They correctly represent the
longitudinal precipitation gradient between the humid and
rainy condition of the Amazon plain, the orographic influ-
ence of the Cordillera Blanca and the dry and cold Pacific
coast conditions (Fig. 6f and h). Those products may thus
be used as indicators of spatial precipitation pattern for the
study of long-term trends in precipitation (that are costly to
generate with WRF3, and not available with KED, because
half of the gauge network was installed only in 2012).
4.2.2 Orographic influence on annual amount at 9 and
3 km spatial resolution
Field data are too remote, with no measurement at high al-
titude to provide information on the altitudinal gradient of
precipitation. On a longitudinal transect near the Huascaran
peak, we observed important differences in annual precip-
itation amount and spatial pattern between KED products
and WRF outputs (Fig. 7b and c). At very high altitude,
we compared precipitation to accumulation data measured
at 5100 m a.s.l. on the Artesonraju glacier (station no. 5 from
Table 1 and Fig. 1). We can observe in Fig. 7c that KED3
and KED9 products suffer from one major impediment: in re-
gions of low gauge density, the spatial pattern will be solely
driven by the altitude, not taking into account the effect of
local slopes and orientation. As a consequence, daily rain-
fall maxima produced by KED are located over the summits,
whereas it is well known that these maxima are rather located
on the slopes, as correctly simulated by WRF3 (Fig. 7b).
The only area with less precipitation in WRF3 compared to
WRF9 is the upper zone of the Cordillera Blanca mountain
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L. Mourre et al.: Assessment of WRF, TRMM and in situ precipitation data over the Cordillera Blanca, Peru 135
Figure 6. Annual precipitation amounts for all products. Altitudinal contours of WRF9 are drawn every 2000 m (altitudes indicated in a).
Delimitation of the upper Rio Santa watershed is in bold gray line.
−78.5 −78 −77.5
−10.5
−10
−9.5
−9
−8.5
−8
 
Huascaran
Huascaran transect
Longitude
a)
 
La
tit
ud
e
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
−78.2 −78 −77.8 −77.6 −77.4 −77.2
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
Longitude
Pr
ec
ip
ita
tio
n 
[m
m 
yr−
1]
 
 
WRF9 topography
WRF3 topography
WRF9
WRF3
In Situ
−78.2 −78 −77.8 −77.6 −77.4 −77.2
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
 
 
Longitude
Al
tit
ud
e 
[m
 as
l]
WRF9 topography
WRF3 topography
KED9
KED3
In Situ
(b) (c)
(a)
[m asl]
Figure 7. Annual precipitation along a longitudinal transect (white crosses in a). Black bars in (b, c) correspond to measured precipitation
or accumulation. Elevation at 9 km spatial resolution is in solid black line, at 3 km in dotted gray line. WRF9 (empty bars) and WRF3
precipitation (light gray) are plotted in (b). KED9 (empty bars) and KED3 precipitation (light gray) are plotted in (c).
www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/20/125/2016/ Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 20, 125–141, 2016
136 L. Mourre et al.: Assessment of WRF, TRMM and in situ precipitation data over the Cordillera Blanca, Peru
0 100 200 300
Shilla
0 100 200 300 −1
0
1
2
3
Shancayan
 
 
0 100 200 300−1
0
1
2
3 Corongo
Te
m
po
ra
l 
St
an
da
rd
 s
co
re
 (S
t) [
−]
 
 
0 100 200 300
Day
0 100 200 300 −1
0
1
2
3
Day
 
 
0 100 200 300−1
0
1
2
3
Te
m
po
ra
l 
St
an
da
rd
 s
co
re
 (S
t) [
−]
Day
 
 
TRMM
KED27
WRF27
In Situ
KED3
WRF3
(a)
(d)
(b)
(e)
(c)
(f)
Figure 8. Temporal standard score of running means of daily precipitation amounts over 10 days for three stations along the Rio Santa Valley,
for 27 km (a–c) and 3 km (d–f) spatial resolutions. The gray line is for KED, the dotted line for WRF, and the dark line either for TRMM
(upper panels) or in situ (lower panels). Day 1 corresponds to 1 August 2012.
2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24
Shilla]In]Situ](n°12)
2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24
0
2
4
6
8
Shancayan]In]Situ](n°]16)
2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24
0
2
4
6
8
Corongo]In]Situ](n°2)
[m
m
]h
−1
]
2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24
h (LT)
Shilla]WRF3
2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24
0
2
4
6
8
h (LT)
Shancayan]WRF3
2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24
0
2
4
6
8
h (LT)
Corongo]WRF3
[m
m
]h
−1
]
Figure 9. Box plot of hourly precipitation amounts normalized by the mean of hourly data during 1 hydrological year (August 2012–
July 2013) for three rain gauges along the Rio Santa Valley (Corongo, Shilla and Shancayan). In situ data are plotted in the upper panel,
while WRF3 outputs are plotted in the lower panels.
range, near the highest peaks (Fig. 7b). In WRF3, the alti-
tudinal variation is greater than in WRF9, with the summit
reaching 5000 ma.s.l.; the spatial resolution is finer, and in
this configuration, the orographic processes on the eastern
slopes of the Andes are more pronounced and correctly rep-
resented at the 3 km spatial resolution.
4.2.3 Seasonal changes along the Rio Santa Valley
The annual cycle is presented in detail for cells correspond-
ing to three stations located along the Rio Santa Valley, Coro-
ngo (station no. 2), Shilla (station no. 12) and Shancayan
(station no. 16) (Fig. 1, Table 1), as these three stations are
representative of others located in the Sierra area. Day 1 in
Fig. 8 corresponds to the beginning of the hydrological year,
1 August 2012. The upper panels (Fig. 8a–c) correspond to
the three products available at the 27 km spatial resolution
(TRMM, KED27, WRF27). During the dry period, between
days 1 and 50, and 300 to 350, TRMM largely overestimates
the precipitation amount for Shilla (Fig. 8b). The percentage
of ice-covered area in the mesh corresponding to Shilla sta-
tion is up to 10 %, while it is less than 0.5 % for the meshes
of Corongo and Shancayan. Error in dry season for Shilla
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L. Mourre et al.: Assessment of WRF, TRMM and in situ precipitation data over the Cordillera Blanca, Peru 137
can be seen as a poor consideration of ice-covered surface in
the TRMM algorithm, as ice on the ground scatters energy in
a similar way as precipitation drops in the atmosphere (Yin
et al., 2004). Temporal trends of KED27 and WRF27 are
similar, with occasional shifts of a few days in heavy rainfall
events (for example, between days 200 and 230 for Corongo
station; Fig. 8a).
Concerning the finer spatial resolution (Fig. 8d–f), KED3
and in situ data have strong similarities for the three stations,
and that confirms the use of the 3 km spatial resolution to
compare gridded data with in situ punctual data. Regarding
WRF3, intensities of precipitation peaks are false in the heart
of the rainy season, but the temporal distribution remains
close to that of rain gauge precipitation.
4.3 Diurnal cycle of precipitation along the Rio Santa
Valley
Half of the rain gauges available over the region of study are
daily reading stations; the network of recording rain gauges
is consequently too sparse and too unevenly distributed to
permit the computation of relevant rainfall grids at a sub-
daily scale. WRF3 thus remains the only product able to
account for the diurnal cycle of precipitation by providing
hourly rainfall grids (even though TRMM3B42 is available
at a 3-hourly time step, the fact that the satellite overpasses
the studied area only once or twice daily makes it difficult to
trust its accuracy for sub-daily timescales). This is important
since the diurnal cycle in a glaciological context controls the
precipitation phase and consequently the surface albedo (one
strength of WRF is that it produces liquid as well as solid
precipitation).
In situ data at Corongo (station no. 2), Shilla (station
no. 12) and Shancayan (station no. 16) display a clear pre-
cipitation peak in the late afternoon, between 16:00:00 and
19:00:00 LT (Fig. 9). This diurnal cycle is visible in the
WRF3 simulations, even though somewhat less pronounced
(more rainfall around noon), and with a slight lag at Shilla
and Shancayan. Looking at the diurnal cycle of precipitation
at a regional scale (Fig. 10), it is noteworthy that the peak
hour of precipitation occurs later in the bottom of the Rio
Santa Valley (dark green for altitudes below 4000 ma.s.l.,
and around 19:00:00 LT) than in the surrounding mountains
(light green color, around 17:00:00 LT). A lack of hourly in-
formation at high altitudes prevents one from validating these
hourly scale characteristics with observations, but they corre-
spond to well-documented orographic processes (valley and
mountain breezes) (Biasutti et al., 2012; Barros, 2013). In the
afternoon, moisture is transported to the peaks by anabatic
winds. At the beginning of the night, moisture downs into the
valley with katabatic winds. In a physical climate model like
WRF, the representation of thermal and orographic circula-
tions theoretically benefits from a finer resolution (Jimenez
et al., 2013; Weckwerth et al., 2014), and mountain–valley
breezes seem to be accurately estimated for the 3 km resolu-
tion runs.
5 Summary and conclusions
Over the past 40 years, the warming climate of the tropical
Andes has led to a significant melting of the glaciers, impact-
ing the hydrological cycle to an extent that remains to be as-
sessed, both for present and for future times. One obstacle to
doing so is our limited ability to evaluate properly the precip-
itation falling over high-altitude catchments, if only because
of the difficulties for installing and maintaining sufficiently
dense in situ networks. In addition, the rough topography
generates strong spatial gradients that are very challenging
to sample. In such a context, remote sensing and modeling
look to be attractive means for complementing the informa-
tion provided by in situ measurements. With this in mind,
this paper has presented a comparison of rainfall products
based on three different sources of information: rain gauge
measurements, satellite imagery and atmospheric model out-
puts. While TRMM3B42 is a widely used standard, making
it a natural candidate to represent the family of satellite rain-
fall products, there is a larger range of possibilities for se-
lecting a ground-based product and an atmospheric model
product. Preliminary tests, the results of which are not de-
tailed in this paper, were used to finally select kriging with
external drift interpolation (KED) as a typical ground-based
product, the external drift being the altitude. As for atmo-
spheric models, the retained product is made of WRF sim-
ulations, WRF being run in a configuration minimizing the
differences between the observations and the model outputs
over the Cordillera Blanca.
The TRMM3B42 product has a resolution of 27 km; the
same resolution was thus used for the computation of coarse
rainfall grids from gauge measurements (KED27) and for
WRF simulations (WRF27). Then gauge rainfall grids and
WRF simulations were also produced at the finer resolutions
of 9 km (KED9 and WRF9) and 3 km (KED3 and WRF3).
This makes a total of seven gridded precipitation products
that were computed and inter-compared over the region of
the Rio Santa in Peru, a glaciated catchment and the second
largest river flowing from the tropical Andes to the Pacific.
Each process leading to the computation of gridded rain-
fall products has its own weaknesses: interpolation errors
for the rain gauge products, indirect measurement of rainfall
for the satellite products, sub-mesh parameterization for the
WRF model outputs. Therefore none of them can be taken as
an indisputable reference, whether it be in terms of quanti-
ties or in terms of occurrence. This is why the performances
of each product were assessed from a double perspective.
A comparison with measured on-site data was carried out
when relevant (diurnal and seasonal cycle, statistics of rain-
fall occurrence), while the ability of each product to repro-
duce some well-known spatial features of precipitation fields
www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/20/125/2016/ Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 20, 125–141, 2016
138 L. Mourre et al.: Assessment of WRF, TRMM and in situ precipitation data over the Cordillera Blanca, Peru
−78.6 −78.4 −78.2 −78 −77.8 −77.6 −77.4 −77.2 −77
−10.5
−10
−9.5
−9
−8.5
−8
 
   17
   1
   16
   10
   16
   15
   18
   18
   18
   18
   24
   16
4000
   18   18
   19
Longitude
   18
2000
   20
0
   8
   2
 
La
tit
ud
e
Peak h
0
5
10
15
20
Figure 10. Peak hour of precipitation in WRF3. White numbers
correspond to peak hour for the in situ data. The altitude of WRF9
is drawn every 2000 m (black lines). Delimitation of the upper Rio
Santa watershed is in gray.
at various timescales (from annual down to daily) was ana-
lyzed when no obvious quantitative reference could be used.
In line with the results of other studies, WRF27 simu-
lations are found to be totally unrealistic in terms of an-
nual quantities. WRF9 and WRF3 simulations are better in
this respect but still largely overestimate the annual total,
with WRF9 being additionally unable to capture properly
the details of the spatial pattern that are well restituted by
WRF3. This shortcoming of WRF9 can be explained by
its resolution that is still too coarse to reproduce correctly
the orographic influence, because a number of key features
are smoothed out (for instance, grid meshes reaching alti-
tudes above 5000 m a.s.l. are found in the WRF3 topography,
which is not the case in the WRF9 topography).
TRMM, with its coarse spatial resolution of 27 km, per-
forms poorly over ice-covered surfaces, because ice on the
ground behaves in a similar way as rain or ice drops in the
atmosphere in terms of scattering the microwave energy (Yin
et al., 2004). Using TRMM in glaciated mountain ranges
should thus be avoided, especially at small timescales where
spatial error compensation does not occur, as it might do
when averaging annual totals over large areas. On the other
hand, TRMM might provide some useful information over
the lowlands on the Amazonian side of the Andes, as already
mentioned by Lavado Casimiro et al. (2009).
Coarse-resolution products (TRMM and WRF27), how-
ever, correctly represent the large spatial gradient between
the humid Amazonian lowlands and the dry Pacific coast,
and their long-term precipitation series can thus be used to
study the interannual variability of the spatial patterns at a
large regional scale and possible long-term trends linked to
climate change.
Comparing the diurnal cycle of the hourly WRF3 simula-
tions with observations in meshes containing one recording
rain gauge leads to the conclusion that this diurnal cycle is
fairly realistic. Of course the default of the large overesti-
mation of precipitation by WRF3 prevents one from using
directly the WRF3 grids as inputs to hydrological models.
The challenge is thus to combine the hourly temporal distri-
bution of precipitation in WRF3 with more accurate precip-
itated amounts. In this respect, one path to explore is to use
the WRF3 diurnal cycle for disaggregating the KED daily
grids.
A more general conclusion is that the topography and the
associated rainfall gradients are too steep in this region for
rainfall products at the spatial resolution of either 9 or 27 km
to provide good rainfall estimates and good rainfall spatial
patterns for glacio-hydrological purposes. Moreover, due to
a poor sampling at high altitudes, kriging with external drift
does not take into account local slope and orientation effects
as the spatial pattern is solely driven by altitude. In sum-
mary, combining the daily rain gauge measurements with the
spatial patterns generated by WRF3 appears to be promis-
ing way for building daily rain fields. There are several tech-
niques to do so, one being to use the WRF3 rain field, instead
of the topography, as the external drift when interpolating the
in situ measurements with a KED technique.
Acknowledgements. This study was performed thanks to the
IRD (French Research Institute for Development) and the
LMI-GREATICE IRD program. Field work was carried out in
cooperation with the UGRH and the UNASAM. We are grateful
to all those who took part in those field campaigns. Gratitude is
expressed to the Senamhi (Servicio Nacional de Meteorología e
Hidrología del Perú), to Waldo Lavado, to the UGRH and to the
UNASAM-CIIADERS project for making station data available.
We also warmly thank our Peruvian colleagues Ken Takahashi and
Jhan Carlo Espinoza from the IGP (Instituto Geofísico del Perú)
who participated in the development and improvement of this work.
We are grateful to Dr Maussion and an anonymous reviewer who
made constructive and detailed comments, which helped improve
the manuscript.
Edited by: E. Morin
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 20, 125–141, 2016 www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/20/125/2016/
L. Mourre et al.: Assessment of WRF, TRMM and in situ precipitation data over the Cordillera Blanca, Peru 139
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