Evaluation of the CLIGEN Weather Generator for Producing Climate Data Records in the Northeast of Iran (Case Study: Sanganeh Station, Khorasan Razavi Province)

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Ph.D., Watershed Management, University of Tehran.

2 Associate Professor, Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Tehran.

Abstract

Recorded daily weather data are used as climate input in a number of models that continuously simulate the natural resource systems (Yu, 2003). However, it is sometimes difficult to obtain the required data, and also to process them simply because they are lacking or unavailable. Weather generators have been accordingly developed to produce synthetic weather sequences capturing the essential features of observed weather data needed for running the models. In effect, weather generators are widely used in hydrological, ecological, and crop-yield modeling frameworks. CLIGEN (CLImate GENerator), which was first developed as a component of the Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) (Nicks et al., 1995), is a stochastic weather generator that generates long sequences of daily precipitation (e.g., the pattern of each rainfall event including its duration, time to peak, and intensity), maximum and minimum daily temperature, dew point temperature, solar radiation, and wind speed and direction. CLIGEN has been currently used as a general weather generator beyond its initial intention in many locations around the world. This research was thus conducted to examine the efficiency of CLIGEN in generating the weather data in Sanganeh station in the northeast of Iran.

Keywords

Main Subjects


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Volume 44, Issue 4
January 2022
Pages 123-137
  • Receive Date: 10 April 2018
  • Revise Date: 04 March 2021
  • Accept Date: 07 March 2021
  • Publish Date: 22 December 2021