A robust stochastic approach in correcting the TRMM precipitation product and simulating flood features

Logical management and decision-making on water resources require reliable weather variables, where precipitation is considered the main weather variable. Accurate estimation of precipitation is the most important topic in hydrological studies. Due to the lack of a dense network and low temporal and spatial resolution levels at ground-level rain gauges, especially in developing countries, remote sensing methods have been used widely. In recent years, a combination of satellite-ground data on precipitation has led to a more accurate insight into precipitation and improved hydrological model performance. In this study, the Kosar Dam Basin in the Khuzestan province of Iran is selected as the research zone. The TRMM satellite data is used on 50 events to analyze the satellite precipitation data. Copula theory is then employed to check the uncertainties of precipitation estimation, and new precipitations are generated through original data and bias errors. A comparison of the results of the improved TRMM, which was bias-corrected by Gaussian copula, and ground-based rainfall demonstrated the efficacy of this method, with nearly 104% and 51% improvement in the CC and RMSE performance indicators, respectively. The HEC-HMS model was used to simulate flood features based on copula-corrected precipitation over different quartiles (10%, 30%, 50%, 70%, and 90%) and rainfall duration (3, 6, 9, and 24 h). The obtained R-factor values show that the associated uncertainty decreases with rainfall duration, down to 46 and 20% for discharge peak and volume, respectively. In general, the copula approach is a robust approach to improve the accuracy of the TRMM precipitation product for simulating hydrological processes.