Copula bias correction for extreme precipitation in re-analysis data over a Greek catchment

The projection of extreme precipitation events with higher accuracy and reliability, which engender severe socioeconomic impacts more frequently, is considered a priority research topic in the scientific community. Although large scale initiatives for monitoring meteorological and hydrological variables exist, the lack of data is still evident particularly in regions with complex topographic characteristics. The latter results in the use of reanalysis data or data derived from Regional Climate Models, however both datasets are biased to the observations resulting in non-accurate results in hydrological studies. The current research presents a newly developed statistical method for the bias correction of the maximum rainfall amount at watershed scale. In particular, the proposed approach necessitates the coupling of a spatial distribution method, namely Thiessen polygons, with a multivariate probabilistic distribution method, namely copulas, for the bias correction of the maximum precipitation. The case study area is the Nestos river basin where the several extreme episodes that have been recorded have direct impacts to the regional agricultural economy. Thus, using daily data by three monitoring stations and daily reanalysis precipitation values from the grids closest to these stations, the results demonstrated that the bias corrected maximum precipitation totals (greater than 90%) is much closer to the real max precipitation totals, while the respective reanalysis value underestimates the real precipitation totals. The overall improvement of the outputs, shows that the proposed Thiessen-copula method could constitute a significant asset to hydrologic simulations.