Raingauge significance evaluation based on mean hyetographs

This study evaluates how raingauge measurements affect estimations of areal hyetographs. The Thiessen polygon and block Kriging methods are used to calculate hourly mean hyetographs of rainfall events. Twelve rainfall events with complete recordings from all observation sites were used in this study. For the power semivariogram, a dimensionless semivariogram is a tool for obtaining hourly semivariograms resulting from standardized rainfall depth. Raingauge weight and three hyetograph characteristics were used as evaluation criteria. All raingauges were in turn subtracted from the original raingauge network, and raingauge effects were then compared with computations using all raingauges. Results of this study demonstrates (1) the block Kriging method is appropriate for describing rainfall process in a spatiotemporal structure (2) the Kriging method is an excellent method for obtaining exact mean rainfall, and (3) different raingauge networks influence mean hyetographs and should not be neglected. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011