Journal of Hydrology 619 (2023) 129322

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Journal of Hydrology
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jhydrol

Research papers

Adapting rainfall bias-corrections to improve hydrological simulations

generated from climate model forcings
David E. Robertson a, *, Francis H.S. Chiew b, Nicholas Potter b
a
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Clayton 3168, Australia
b
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Acton 2601, Australia

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Global circulation models (GCMs) provide important insights into future climate change. Bias-correction of
Climate change downscaled GCM output is integral to any hydrological investigations of climate change due to discrepancies
Bias correction between the statistics of downscaled GCM simulations and observations. Many bias-correction techniques have
Hydrological simulation
been developed to support hydrological applications. However, there have been few comparisons of the sensi­
Hydroclimate
tivity of hydrological simulations to different bias-correction assumptions. This paper investigates the impor­
tance of two common assumptions: (i) simultaneously correcting bias at multiple time scales, and (ii) explicitly
handling rainfall autocorrelation; in quantile mapping of downscaled GCM rainfall data for hydrological simu­
lation. Four quantile mapping methods are applied to correct bias in dynamically downscaled reanalysis and
historical GCM simulations of rainfall for 11 catchments in south-eastern Australia and the performance of bias-
corrected rainfall and streamflow simulations is evaluated.
All quantile mapping methods investigated can effectively eliminate bias in monthly and annual rainfall totals.
Quantile mapping methods that consider differences in the temporal dependence (autocorrelation) structure of
downscaled GCM and observed rainfall are most effective in reducing bias in rainfall sequencing statistics, such
as probability of consecutive wet or dry days. Streamflow simulations of mean and high streamflow percentiles
are underestimated when generated using rainfall that is corrected using quantile mapping methods that do not
consider differences in the temporal dependence structure of downscaled GCM and observed rainfall. Future
hydrological investigations of climate change should therefore adopt methods that explicitly consider the tem­
poral dependence structures of downscaled GCM and observed rainfall.

1. Introduction and dynamical methods. Dynamical downscaling uses regional climate

Global circulation models (GCMs) generate important input to hy­
drological modelling investigations of the impacts of future climate
change (Chiew et al., 2009; Zheng et al., 2018). Hydrological processes
are highly sensitive to rainfall (Chiew, 2006; Sankarasubramanian et al.,
2001) and therefore hydrological model simulations are designed to be
similarly sensitive to the distribution of forcing data (Fu et al., 2007).
However, the coarse spatial resolution of GCMs means that model
output, particularly precipitation simulations, can have very different
characteristics to observations and therefore cannot be directly used for
hydrological applications (Charles et al., 2020; Potter et al., 2020).
Downscaling methods are commonly applied to increase the spatial
resolution of climate projections (Maraun, 2016). A range of down­
scaling techniques have been applied, including empirical, statistical
models forced by GCMs to generate climate simulations and projections
at finer spatial scales, and has recently been shown to add value to
projections from GCMs, particularly precipitation projections and in
areas of complex topography (Di Virgilio et al., 2020). While dynamical
downscaling can add value to projections, discrepancies still remain
between distributional characteristics of downscaled GCM-based simu­
lations and ground-based observations that are used to establish hy­
drological models (Charles et al., 2020; Ekström et al., 2015; Potter
et al., 2020).
Many methods have been proposed to correct distributional errors,
or bias, in downscaled GCM data (Maraun, 2016). Scaling approaches
pragmatically adjust historical time series to reflect climate changes
projected by GCMs (Chiew et al., 2009; Mitchell, 2003). The limitation
of these methods is that scaling adjusts the magnitude of historical time

* Corresponding author at: CSIRO Land and Water, Private Bag 10, Clayton South, VIC 3169, Australia.
E-mail address: david.robertson@csiro.au (D.E. Robertson).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2023.129322
Received 27 January 2022; Received in revised form 21 February 2023; Accepted 22 February 2023
Available online 27 February 2023
0022-1694/© 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-
nc-nd/4.0/).
D.E. Robertson et al.
series therefore future climate sequences will not reflect any change to
the spatial or temporal patterns (Maraun, 2016).
A range of bias-correction methods also exist that create a mapping
between the distributions of raw and downscaled GCM data and ob­
servations (Johnson and Sharma, 2012; Maraun, 2016; Mehrotra and
Sharma, 2016; Mehrotra and Sharma, 2021; Teng et al., 2015). Such
methods use empirical or parametric descriptions of the distribution of
GCM and observed climate variables and assume that the quantile of a
GCM, or downscaled, projection can be mapped directly to an identical
quantile in the observed distribution. A significant limitation of many
quantile based bias-correction methods is that quantile mapping occurs
separately for each location, time step and variable, and therefore does
not guarantee the resultant time series reproduces important spatial,
temporal or inter-variable characteristics (Mehrotra and Sharma, 2016).
For hydrological modelling applications that integrate over time and
space, this can lead to underestimation of extreme streamflow events
and bias in aggregate flow statistics such as the mean annual flow
(Bennett et al., 2012; Charles et al., 2020). Inter-variable correlations
between temperature and precipitation have been found to be particu­
larly important in regions and seasons where precipitation falls as a
mixture of snow and rain (Chen et al., 2018; Seo et al., 2019).
A limited number of bias correction methods exist that consider
spatial and temporal correlations in time series. Johnson and Sharma
(2012) introduced an approach to correct bias in monthly rainfall pro­
jections that considers autocorrelation and applies corrections at mul­
tiple nested time scales. Their approach seeks to address issues related to
both high and low-frequency variability in GCM output. They adopt a
lag-one autoregressive model to characterise the temporal persistence
and while it is argued that a more sophisticated time series model could
be used, the use of such models has not yet been reported in the liter­
ature. For hydrological applications, the ability to apply corrections over
multiple temporal scales reduces the chance that streamflow simulations
generated using bias-corrected rainfall will be biased. However, the
Johnson and Sharma (2012) formulation of the bias-correction and the
parameter inference methods adopted means the approach is not able to
be applied to daily data and does not necessarily correct conditional
biases over all time scales (Mehrotra and Sharma, 2012). Extensions of
the Johnson and Sharma (2012) approach have introduced the ability to
handle daily rainfall data, represent spatial and inter-variable correla­
tion (Mehrotra and Sharma, 2015; Mehrotra and Sharma, 2016; Meh­
rotra and Sharma, 2021). While the formulation of the nested bias
correction algorithm is hierarchical (Mehrotra and Sharma, 2012),
moment estimates of parameters are used and therefore conditional
dependencies between parameters at different scales are neglected.
Neglecting these conditional dependencies requires recursive imple­
mentation of the nested bias correction to minimise bias in projections
over all time scales and therefore an algorithm that is complex to
implement.
Mehrotra and Sharma (2019) also introduced an alternative bias
correction approach that seeks to correct the spatial, temporal and inter-
variable correlations through the use of an empirical copula coupling
method that is analogous to the Schaake shuffle that is applied for
precipitation forecast calibration for hydrological applications (Clark
et al., 2004). The method reorders bias-corrected projections so that the
lag-1 (year) autocorrelation of normalised projections reflects the
observed autocorrelation adjusted for the different between the histor­
ical and future GCM autocorrelation. The approach is applied separately
to each calendar day across years, meaning that there is no guarantee
that the between-day correlation for future periods is adequately
described. In addition, when applied to precipitation the effect of zero
values on correlation estimates is ignored, meaning that autocorrelation
estimates are potentially in error (Smith et al., 2010), and potentially
leading to poorer performance of the reordering method relative to non-
bounded variables such as temperature.
Parametric methods to correct inter-variable and spatial correlation
have also been introduced into bias-correction methods (Bárdossy and
2
Journal of Hydrology 619 (2023) 129322
Pegram, 2012; Bürger et al., 2011; Cannon, 2016; Cannon, 2018). These
methods establish correlation matrices for both GCM and observed time
series and adjust the correlation of bias-corrected data using a matrix
decomposition of the correlation matrices. As the matrix decomposition
methods assume a multivariate Gaussian dependence structure, in some
instance a recursive procedure is required where spatial or intervariable
dependence structures differ from multivariate Gaussian (Cannon,
2016). While these methods have been applied to correct inter-variable
and spatial correlations, conceptually an identical approach could be
taken to handle temporal correlation as well.
While numerous bias-correction methods have been developed to
address the limitations of univariate quantile mapping, very few studies
demonstrate their effectiveness for hydrological applications. In this
paper we introduce a univariate bias-correction method and developed
it to (i) simultaneously correct bias at daily and aggregate time steps,
and (ii) handle differences in the autocorrelation structures of down­
scaled GCM and observed rainfall using a consistent statistical frame­
work that allows the effects of method extension to be explored. The
developments of the bias-correction methods are designed to address the
limitations of univariate bias-correction for hydrological applications
identified by Potter et al. (2020) and Charles et al. (2020) The methods
build on the concepts of Johnson and Sharma (2012) and Mehrotra and
Sharma (2016), but seeks to address some of their limitations by
adopting the parametric statistical models previously used to post-
process rainfall forecasts for hydrological applications and likelihood-
based parameter estimation techniques (Robertson et al., 2013). We
then contrast the ability of the methods to reproduce rainfall statistics
critical for hydrological simulation and also illustrate their impact on
streamflow simulations for 11 catchments in south-eastern Australia.
The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 introduces the bias-
correction methods building from a basic univariate mapping method
commonly applied to include corrections at multiple time scales and
allowing for autocorrelation. Section 3 describes methods adopted to
evaluate the performance of the bias-correction methods with respect to
the rainfall characteristics and streamflow simulations. Section 4 pre­
sents result of the evaluation and discusses the implications for hydro­
climate projections under a changing climate. We summarise our key
findings and conclusions in Section 5.
2. Quantile mapping bias-correction method
Quantile mapping is an approach to bias correction that involves
adjusting a set of climate projections according to the relationship be­
tween the quantiles of a set of historical GCM simulations and corre­
sponding observations. The quantile relationship is obtained by fitting
cumulative distribution functions independently to the historical GCM
simulations and observations. Both empirical and parametric forms of
the cumulative distribution function have been used as the basis of
quantile mapping (Teng et al., 2015). Here, we firstly introduce our
basic (univariate) approach to quantile mapping and then extend the
approach to jointly model multiple temporal scales and autocorrelation
structure of rainfall.
2.1. Basic univariate quantile mapping
For our base approach to quantile mapping, we independently map
daily values as is commonly practice (Bennett et al., 2012; Charles et al.,
2020; Potter et al., 2020; Teng et al., 2015). We adopt a parametric
description of the marginal distribution that has previously been applied
to calibration of rainfall forecasts at hourly (Robertson et al., 2013;
Shrestha et al., 2015), daily (Wang et al., 2012) and seasonal (Schepen
et al., 2014) time scales. To allow for seasonal rainfall distribution, we
use different marginal distributions for each calendar month.
2.1.1. Parametric distribution
The distribution of daily rainfall, for a given month, is assumed to
D.E. Robertson et al. Journal of Hydrology 619 (2023) 129322

follow a transformed normal distribution. Here we adopt a log-sinh ( ( ⃒ ) )

transformation (Wang et al., 2012), but any appropriate trans­ zo = F −o 1 Fp zp ⃒μp , σ p |μo , σ o (9)
formation can be used. The log-sinh transformation is given by The quantile-mapped rainfall can be obtained by applying the back-
1 transforming zo using the following
z = log(sinh(a + b̃
x) ) (1)
b 1
̃
x= (argsinh(exp(zb) ) − ao ) (10)
5x bo
where ̃
x= max(x) is a scaled version of the observed rainfall (x) to support
similar parameter ranges across different locations and data types. The censoring assumption means that when zp ⩽zc the precise value
⃒
The transformed rainfall data is assumed to follow a normal distri­ of Fp (zp ⃒μp , σ p ) is unknown. In this case an estimate of the cdf value is
bution with zero values treated as censored data. The censoring treat­ obtained using the following
ment allows for a single continuous distribution to be used to describe ( ⃒ ) ( ⃒ )
Fp zp ⃒μp , σp = u⋅Fp zc ⃒μp , σp (11)
what would otherwise require a mixed discrete–continuous distribution
to describe the probability of zero rainfall and distribution of non-zero
where u is sampled from a standard uniform distribution.
rainfall amounts. The censoring treatment assumes that distribution of
transformed rainfall continues below zero, but the precise (negative)
2.2. Hierarchical quantile mapping
values are unknown, resulting in a point mass equivalent to the proba­
bility of zero rainfall. The distribution of transformed rainfall data is
The basic daily quantile mapping approach has known limitations
given by
including the ability to reproduce multi-day rainfall totals (Potter et al.,
( )
z ∼ N μm , σ2m (2) 2020). Here we introduce a hierarchical approach to quantile mapping
to concurrently model (and adjust) the average rainfall over multi-day
where μm is the mean daily rainfall for the given month m and σ2m the periods and daily anomalies about the multi-day rainfall averages. The
variance. assumption is that a hierarchical approach to quantile mapping can
ensure that the quantiles of multi-day accumulations (through the mean
2.1.2. Parameter inference daily rainfall over a multi-day period), which are believed to influence
The marginal distribution of rainfall for each month m is described hydrological simulations, are corrected in addition to just the daily
by four parameters {am , bm , μm , σ m }. For clarity of the subsequent for­ rainfall totals. For this study, we introduce the approach by modelling
mulations, we drop the subscript m from all parameters and data. A between-year variations in the mean daily rainfall for each month,
maximum a posteriori estimate of these parameters is obtained by opti­ however, other configurations of the hierarchy are also possible. The
misation. The posterior density function is given by approach adopted is similar in nature to the nested bias-correction
introduce by Johnson and Sharma (2012).
∏
T
p(a, b, μ, σ |x )∝p(a, b, μ, σ ) p(xt |a, b, μ, σ ) (3) The hierarchical description of the marginal distribution assumes
t=1 that after transformation daily rainfall observations follow a normal
distribution
where the likelihood function is given by ( )
{ z ∼ N μy , σ2d
Jzt →xt ϕ(zt |μ, σ ) zt > zc ( ) (12)
p(xt |a, b, μ, σ ) = (4) μy ∼ N μ, σ2y
Φ(zc |μ, σ ) zt ⩽zc

where Jzt →xt = coth(a + bx̃t ) is the Jacobian of the trans­ where μy is the mean daily rainfall for year y, σ 2d the variance of the daily
( )
formation,ϕ yt |μ, σ is the probability density function of the normal anomalies about μy and σ2y the variance of μy about the global mean μ.
distribution and Φ(zc |μ, σ ) is the cumulative density function, and zc the Combining the distributions in yields
transformed value of a generic censor threshold, set to zero in this case. ( )
The prior distribution of parameters is given by z ∼ N μ, σ 2d + σ 2y (13)

p(a, b, μ, σ ) = p(a)p(b)p(μ)p(σ ) (5)

which is equivalent to equation (2) where σ 2 = σ 2d +σ 2y .
p(a)∝1 a⩽1
p(log(b) )∝N(0, 1) 2.2.1. Parameter inference
(6)
p(μ)∝1 Due to the hierarchical nature of the model, estimation of the model
p(log(σ ) )∝1 parameters needs to be undertaken in stages. The first stage involves
{ }
The prior distributions are lightly informative, encouraging small fitting the global parameters a, b, μ, σd , σ y . A maximum a posteriori
variances and weak transformations unless the data suggest otherwise. estimate of these parameters is obtained by optimisation. The posterior
density function is given by
2.1.3. Quantile mapping. ∫ ∏
( ) ( )∏
Y I
( ⃒ ) ( )
Once the marginal distributions of downscaled GCM and observed p a, b, μ, σ y , σ d |x ∝p a, b, μ, σy , σ d p xy,i ⃒μy , σ d p μy |μ, σy dμy
rainfall are obtained they can be applied for quantile mapping. y=1 μy i=1

In the transformed space, the cumulative density function (cdf) of (14)

daily downscaled GCM simulated rainfall is given by
( ⃒ ) where xy,i is the transformed rainfall for ith day of year y, the likelihood
F p z p ⃒ μp , σ p (7) ( ⃒ )
⃒
function p xy,i ⃒μy , σd is given by equation (4) and the prior distribu­
and the cdf of daily observed rainfall is given by tions
( ) ( )
Fo (zo |μo , σo ) (8) p a, b, μ, σ d , σy = p(a)p(b)p(μ)p(σ d )p σy (15)

Combining equations (7) and (8), quantile mapping can be described

by

3
D.E. Robertson et al. Journal of Hydrology 619 (2023) 129322

p(a)∝1 a⩽1 We extend our base and hierarchical descriptions of the marginal
distribution of rainfall by assuming that the joint distribution of trans­
p(log(b) )∝N(0, 1)
formed rainfall within a calendar month can be described using a
p(μ)∝1
(16) multivariate normal distribution. For bias correction applications AR1
p(log(σ d ) )∝1 models have previously been assumed for monthly and annual data (e.g.
( ) Johnson and Sharma, 2012; Mehrotra and Sharma, 2012; Mehrotra and
1
p σ2y ∝ 2 σ 2y > 0.0 Sharma, 2016). Methods used for generating stochastic rainfall data at
σ y + 0.52
shorter time steps tend to embed higher order autocorrelation functions
(Obeysekera et al., 1987). In this study we assume that the autocorre­
where a half Cauchy prior on σ2y is recommended by (Gelman, 2006) for
lation of transformed rainfall can be described using an ARMA(2,1)
hierarchical variances and the remaining priors are consistent with the { }
model with parameters ρ1,m , ρ2.m , η1,m . Using this strategy, trans­
non-hierarchical model.
formed rainfall for a calendar month are assumed to follow a multi­
Computation of the posterior density function requires the integra­
variate normal distribution
tion over μy for every set of parameters. Given that μy follows a normal
( )
distribution, Gauss-Hermite integration can be used to efficiently zy,m ∼ N μy,m ⋅1I(y,m) , σ 2y,m Rm (25)
compute the integrand using a small number of samples of μy for given
( )
values of a, b, μ, σ y , σd . where zy,m is a vector of transformed rainfall for calendar month m and
Once the global parameters are obtained, the values of μy for each year y, 1I(y,m) is a vector of ones with the same length as zy,m and Rm a
year can be estimated using the following likelihood. matrix representing the autocorrelation function. The theoretical auto­
( ⃒ ) ( ⃒ ) ( ) correlation function for an ARMA model at lag τ can be derived using the
p μy ⃒μ, σ y , σd , xy ∝p xy ⃒μy , σ d p μy |μ, σy
method described by Brockwell and Davis (1991). The matrix Rm is
∏ ( ⃒
I
) ( ) (17) populated with the theoretical autocorrelation function using lag
= p xy,i ⃒μy , σ d p μy |μ, σy
i=1 computed from the difference between the column and row index.

2.2.2. Quantile mapping procedure 2.3.1. Parameter inference

The above formulation can be used for a two-stage quantile mapping Parameter inference follows the almost identically for the cases that
technique, where mapping is initially applied to the monthly mean and ignore the autocorrelation except for the likelihood function. The
subsequently applied to the daily anomalies about that mean. computation of the likelihood function for the multivariate distribution
In the transformed space, the cdf of mean monthly downscaled GCM follows the method of Wang and Robertson (2011). The rainfall vector is
simulated rainfall is given by separated into two subvectors
( ⃒ ) [ ]
Fu,p μy,p ⃒μp , σy,p (18) x (m)
xy = y (26)
xy (n)
and the cdf of daily anomalies of downscaled GCM simulations by
( ⃒ ) where xy (m) consists of days where rainfall is above the censor threshold
Fd,p zp ⃒μy,p , σd,p (19) and xy (n) are less than or equal to the censor threshold. The likelihood
Similarly, for transformed observations, the cdf of mean monthly function for a set of parameters θ = {μ, σ , ρ1 , ρ2 , η1 } is then given by
rainfall is given by ( ) ( )
( ⃒ ) ( p xy |θ )= p (xy (m), xy (n)⩽x
⃒ c |θ ) (27)
⃒
Fμ,o μy,o ⃒μo , σ y,o (20) = p xy (m)|θ × p xy (n)⩽xc (n) xy (m), θ

and the cdf of daily observed anomalies by where

( ⃒ ) ) ∏Im
Fo,d zo ⃒μy,o , σd,o (21) (
p xy (m) =
(
Jz(m)i →x(m)i p xy (m)|θ
)
(28)
Combining equations 18-21, quantile mapping can be described by
i=1

( ⃒ ) ( ⃒ )
( ( ⃒ )⃒⃒ ( ( ⃒ ) ) ) p xy (n)⩽xc ⃒xy (m), θ = p zy (n)⩽zc (n)⃒zy (m), θ
− 1
zo = Fd,o Fd,p zp ⃒μy,p , σd,o ⃒Fμ− ,o1 Fμ,p μy,p ⃒μp , σ y,p |μo , σ y,o , σd,o (22) ∫ zc (n)
( ⃒ ) (29)
= p zy (n)⃒zy (m), θ dzy (n)
Effectively this is a two stages process where Stage 1 involves − ∞
quantile mapping the mean monthly rainfall
Im is the dimension of xy (m) and zc (n) a vector of transformed censor
( ( ⃒ ) ) ( ⃒
μy,o = Fμ− ,o1 Fμ,p μy,p ⃒μp , σ y,p |μo , σ y,o (23) thresholds the size of xy (n). The conditional distribution p zy (n)⃒zy (m),
)
θ is multivariate normal and the computation of the mean vector and
Stage 2 involves quantile mapping the daily anomaly
covariance matrix can be found in standard statistical texts (Gelman
( ( ⃒ )⃒ )
− 1
zo = Fd,o Fd,p zp ⃒μm,p , σd,o ⃒μm,o , σ d,o (24) et al., 1995). The RANNRM algorithm of Genz (1993) are used to
perform the numerical integration of the multivariate normal
distribution.
2.3. Dealing with autocorrelation
2.3.2. Quantile mapping
Both the base and hierarchical approaches to quantile mapping do The approach to quantile mapping when autocorrelation is modelled
not make allowance for there being different correlation structures in follows that described by Cannon (2018). The steps of the quantile
the downscaled GCM simulations and observations. Cannon (2016) mapping are:
proposed a multivariate bias correction approach which uses a multi­
variate normal distribution to model the joint distribution of several 1. Transform the vector of downscaled GCM rainfall for a given month
{ }
different climate variables. Autocorrelation of rainfall within a multi- using the transformation parameters ap , bp inferred using the
day period can be considered as a multivariate problem where each downscaled GCM data.
day in the period has an identical marginal distribution.

4
D.E. Robertson et al.
2. Augment any censored values using a Gibbs sampler, see Wang and
Robertson (2011) for details.
3. Standardise the augmented vector of transformed downscaled GCM
rainfall from step 2 to give a vector of correlated standard normal
variates by subtracting by the mean μy,p and dividing by the standard
deviation σy,p inferred using the downscaled GCM data.
4. Rotate the correlated standard normal variates from step 3 using the
inverse of the Cholesky decomposition of the matrix Rp for the
downscaled GCM rainfall, to give a vector of uncorrelated standard
normal variates.
5. Rotate the uncorrelated standard normal variates from step 4 using
the Cholesky decomposition of the matrix Ro for the observed rainfall
to give a vector of correlated standard normal variates following the
correlation structure of the observations.
6. Unstandardise the vector of correlated standard normal variates
from step 5 by multiplying by the standard deviation σy,o and adding
the mean μy,o inferred using the observations.
7. Back-transform the output of step 6 using the transformation pa­
rameters {ao , bo } inferred using the observations.
8. Set negative values in the output of step 7 to zero.
3. Assessment of quantile mapping methods
The previous section describes four possible approaches to quantile
mapping:
1. Basic daily quantile mapping neglecting autocorrelation,
2. Hierarchical quantile mapping neglecting autocorrelation,
3. Basic daily quantile mapping allowing for autocorrelation,
4. Hierarchical quantile mapping allowing for autocorrelation.
Our motivation in developing the more sophisticated quantile map­
ping methods is to address limitations of simpler approaches for hy­
drological simulation applications. We therefore assess the performance
of the different approaches for with respect to bias-corrected rainfall and
also for hydrological simulations.
3.1. Rainfall
We assess the efficacy of the four bias-correction methods in a cross-
validation mode. An interwoven two-fold cross validation scheme is
adopted, similar to that applied adopted by Corney et al. (2013), to
assess the out-of-sample performance of the quantile mapping schemes.
Under this cross-validation scheme, the available data set is separated
into two subsets, one used for fitting the quantile mapping distributions
and one used to evaluate the quantile mapped data. The two subsets are
then swapped, and the statistical characteristics of the entire quantile
mapped dataset are evaluated. For this study the subsetting strategy is to
use every second year, so that any long-term trends or step-changes in
either the GCM or observed data are present in both the fitting and
evaluation subsets. This strategy seeks to address the many limitations of
cross-validation identified by Maraun (2016).
We firstly evaluate the ability of the parametric distributions to
describe the marginal distribution of observed and downscaled GCM
rainfall using the approach described by Robertson et al. (2013). The
best-fit distribution parameters are obtained using the methods
described in the previous section and all available data. A set of samples,
equal in length to the number of observations used to fit the model, is
drawn from the fitted distribution. The set of samples represents one
realisation of the cumulative marginal distribution. To represent the
sampling uncertainty associated with taking a limited set of samples
from the marginal distribution, multiple (1000) realisations of the cu­
mulative distribution are generated and summarised using the median
and the [0.025, 0.975] quantile ranges for each percentile. Graphical
comparisons of the marginal distributions are compared to the
5
Journal of Hydrology 619 (2023) 129322
observations in a probability plot.
We compare the efficacy of the four bias-corrections methods by
computing a range of metrics that reflect the bias in the annual and
monthly mean rainfall, and also in metrics relevant for hydrological
modelling including the length of wet and dry spells, the magnitude of
three-day rainfall totals, and the persistence of daily rainfall, specifically
the lag-one autocorrelation, dry-dry day probability and wet-wet day
probability.
3.2. Hydrological simulations
Hydrological modelling was undertaken using the GR4J rainfall-
runoff model (Perrin et al., 2003). Model parameters were calibrated
for each catchment using the Shuffled complex evolution algorithm
(Duan et al., 1994; Duan et al., 1993) by optimising a compound
objective function. The adopted objective function is
OF = (1 − NSE) + 5(log(1 + bias) )2.5 (30)
where
∑T ( )2
Qs,t − Qo,t
NSE = 1 − ∑t=1
T ( ) 2
, (31)
t=1 Qo,t − Qo
(Qs − Qo )
bias = , (32)
Qo
and NSE is the Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (Nash and Sutcliffe, 1970), Qs,t is
the simulated streamflow for time step t ,Qo,t is the observed streamflow,
Qs is the mean simulated streamflow, Qo is the mean observes stream­
flow and T the total number of time steps.
Streamflow simulations are generated using a hydrological model
calibrated to observed streamflow (see Supplementary Material for
calibration performance assessment). Absolute bias in streamflow sim­
ulations is computed by comparing the streamflow simulations gener­
ated using the bias-corrected rainfall, generated in fitting mode, to
streamflow simulations generated using observed forcing. By computing
bias using this approach the ability of the hydrological model to repre­
sent observed streamflow is disregarded. We also focus our efforts on
assessing the sensitivity of hydrological modelling to assumptions in
rainfall bias-correction methods and therefore we use the observed PE
data for all streamflow simulations.
The impact of rainfall bias-correction methods on streamflow simu­
lations are assessed by computing the bias of the mean daily streamflow
and for a range of daily streamflow percentiles. As we are investigating
bias-correction methods that modify the persistence in rainfall we also
assess biases in measures of streamflow persistence, particularly the
length of simulated low- and high-flow periods, and percentiles of
streamflow accumulations over 3- and 10-day periods and also accu­
mulations over periods of 1,3,6 and 12 months.
3.3. Catchments and data
Eleven catchments in south-eastern Australia are used in this study
(Fig. 1, Table 1). The catchments are important for sources of irrigation
or urban water supply and all but one have previously been used by
Charles et al. (2020) and Potter et al. (2020) where they demonstrated
the limitations of many existing simple bias-correction schemes.
Rainfall and potential evaporation (PE) data for the study catch­
ments is derived from the gridded analysis produced by the Australian
Water Availability Project (AWAP) (Jones et al., 2009; Raupach et al.,
2008). Streamflow observations for the catchments are obtained from
the Victorian Government hydrological data archives (https://data.wat
er.vic.gov.au/).
Bias-correction methods are applied to readily available dynamically
downscaled simulations from the NARCliM (New South Wales and ACT
D.E. Robertson et al. Journal of Hydrology 619 (2023) 129322

Fig. 1. Location of catchments used in this study. Details for each catchment are given in Table 1 using numeric map ID.

downscaling methods are described by Evans et al. (2014).

Table 1 In this study, only the historical simulations of the downscaled GCM
Attributes of catchments uses in this study.
rainfall data are considered, and analysis of the performance of the bias-
Map Gauge Gauge Name Area Mean Mean correction methods is performed separately for the downscaled rean­
ID Number (km2) annual annual PE
alysis and GCM simulations. All analysis uses data for the period 1990 –
rainfall
2009, inclusive.
0 221,212 Bemm River @ 731 993 1130
Princes Highway
1 226,204 Latrobe River @ 557 1255 1115
4. Results
Willow Grove
2 226,402 Moe Drain Drain @ 608 957 1050 4.1. Fit of marginal distributions
Trafalgar East
3 234,201 Woady Yaloak 1167 614 1062
The daily marginal distributions fitted using the hierarchical and
Creek @ Cressy
(Yarima) non-hierarchical methods, with and without allowing for autocorrela­
4 235,203 Curdies River @ 721 827 1032 tion, display few differences (Fig. 2 and Fig. 3). The high daily rainfall
Curdie values are better fitted for the observed rainfall than the downscaled
5 235,208 Gellibrand River @ 575 1111 1055 rainfall for the example shown, but this is not always the case. The large
Carlisle
6 235,224 Gellibrand River @ 1042 1050 1044
rainfall values of the distributions fitted using autocorrelation tend to be
Burrupa slightly smaller than those where autocorrelation is neglected. In all
7 403,210 Ovens River @ 1229 1376 1229 cases, nearly all the observations lie within the 95% uncertainty in­
Myrtleford tervals of the fitted distributions and the probability of zero rainfall is
8 405,209 Acheron River @ 629 1281 1154
well matched. On occasion, the largest rainfall observation does fall
Taggerty
9 405,219 Goulburn River @ 704 1184 1194 outside the 95% uncertainty interval, not shown. This can be expected as
Dohertys the probability of largest values within the limited 20 years used in this
10 405,227 Big River @ 627 1333 1176 study is highly uncertain.
Jamieson In general, the fitted parametric distribution does describe the key
features of the marginal distribution of the observations and would
Regional Climate Modelling) project (https://www.ccrc.unsw.edu.au/si therefore appear to be adequate for quantile mapping purposes. How­
tes/default/files/NARCliM/index.html). The NARCliM project adopted ever, the fit of the parametric distribution is not perfect for either the
3 configurations of the WRF (Weather Research and Forecasting GCM or observed rainfall and as a result bias-corrections performed
regional climate model) to two different reanalysis products (NCEP/ using the fitted distributions for quantile mapping may not totally
NCAR reanalysis, and ERA-Interim) and four GCMs (CCCM3.1, CSIRO- eliminate all bias.
Mk3.0, ECHAM5, and MIROC3.2) from the Coupled Model Intercom­ Differences in methods for fitting the marginal distribution emerge in
parison Project Phase 3 (CMIP3). Detailed descriptions of the the distributions of total monthly rainfall (Fig. 4 and Fig. 5) derived from

6
D.E. Robertson et al. Journal of Hydrology 619 (2023) 129322

Fig. 2. Examples of daily non-hierarchical parameteric distributions fitted to downscaled ERA-Interim reanalysis (left panel) and observed (right panel) May rainfall
for catchment 226204. The solid line represents the median fitted distribution and dashed lines represent the 95% uncertainty estimates of the fitted distribution
generated using sampling.

Fig. 3. Examples of daily hierarchical parameteric distributions fitted to downscaled ERA-Interim reanalysis (left panel) and observed (right panel) May rainfall for
catchment 226204. The solid line represents the median fitted distribution and dashed lines represent the 95% uncertainty estimates of the fitted distribution
generated using sampling.

the daily distributions presented in Fig. 2 and Fig. 3. The variance of
monthly rainfall totals derived from data generated using the non-
hierarchical parametric distribution that does not consider autocorre­
lation is considerably lower than for the other methods (Fig. 4). The
lower variance of monthly rainfall totals is illustrated by the flatter blue
lines in Fig. 4, that poorly describe the highest and lowest monthly to­
tals. This limitation arises because the sampled daily rainfall is purely
random. Adopting a hierarchical method or allowing for autocorrelation
in the fitted marginal distribution induces structure in the sampled daily
rainfall and improves the ability to describe the distribution of monthly
rainfall totals. The distributions of monthly rainfall totals derived using
the combination of the hierarchical method and allowing for autocor­
relation tend to better characterise the highest and lowest monthly
rainfall values.

7
D.E. Robertson et al. Journal of Hydrology 619 (2023) 129322

Fig. 4. Examples of monthly non-hierarchical parameteric distributions fitted to downscaled ERA-Interim reanalysis (left panel) and observed (right panel) May
rainfall for catchment 226204. The solid line represents the median fitted distribution and dashed lines represent the 95% uncertainty estimates of the fitted dis­
tribution generated using sampling.

Fig. 5. Examples of monthly hierarchical parameteric distributions fitted to downscaled ERA-Interim reanalysis (left panel) and observed (right panel) May rainfall
for catchment 226204. The solid line represents the median fitted distribution and dashed lines represent the 95% uncertainty estimates of the fitted distribution
generated using sampling.

4.2. Evaluation of bias corrected rainfall
Quantile mapping reduces the large biases of annual and monthly
rainfall in both downscaled GCM and reanalysis rainfall to nearly zero
(Fig. 6). For all months, the interquartile range of bias is smaller than
10%, but in some months the bias after quantile mapping for a small
number of catchments, GCM and downscaling can be as high as 20% as
indicated by the whiskers of the box plots. These residual biases are
likely to be an indication that the parametric description of the marginal
distribution is inadequate in some instances.
Differences in the annual and monthly bias between the quantile
mapping approaches are small and can be considered inconsequential
(Fig. 6). However, differences between the quantile mapping ap­
proaches do become evident when evaluating rainfall sequencing

8
D.E. Robertson et al. Journal of Hydrology 619 (2023) 129322

Fig. 6. Relative bias of mean annual and monthly rainfall for downscaled historical GCM (top panel) and reanalysis (lower panel) simulated rainfall under cross-
validation. The box plots show the range across the combinations of 11 catchments, GCMs and downscaling versions. Boxes representing the interquartile range
are divided by a line representing the median, and whiskers represent the entire range of combinations. Box plots are derived from results for 11 catchments, three
WRF downscaling configurations and two reanalysis products (66 total combinations) or four GCMs (132 total combinations). The vertical scale has been amplified to
highlight differences in the bias-correction methods.

metrics (Fig. 7). Quantile mapping approaches that ignore differences in
autocorrelation between the observed and downscaled GCM data
display residual bias in many of the rainfall sequencing metrics. These
biases are practically eliminated using approaches that consider auto­
correlation, for bias correction of downscaled outputs from both rean­
alyses and host GCM. This is particularly evident for the mean dry-spell
length, mean wet-spell length, lag-one autocorrelation and consecutive
wet and dry day probabilities, PWW and PDD respectively. Bias
correction methods that ignore autocorrelation appear to increase bias
of some rainfall sequencing metrics relative to the raw downscaled GCM
data, for example the lag-one autocorrelation and mean wet-spell
length.
Differences in the bias of rainfall sequencing metrics between the
hierarchical and non-hierarchical mapping methods tend to be very

Fig. 7. Relative bias of rainfall sequencing metrics for downscaled historical GCM (top panel) and reanalysis (lower panel) simulated rainfall.

9
D.E. Robertson et al.
small. Where there are differences, there is no clear pattern as to which
is the better performing method, with the hierarchical method dis­
playing smaller and less variable bias for some metrics and the non-
hierarchical method displaying similar characteristic for other metrics.
This suggests that the effects of between-year variations in rainfall are
likely to vary considerably between catchments.
Fig. 6 and Fig. 7 also highlight there are differences in the bias
characteristics of the raw downscaled reanalysis and historical GCM
simulations. The raw downscaled reanalysis tends to have lower bias in
monthly and annual means, and also in many rainfall sequencing met­
rics than the downscaled GCM data. The bias-corrected reanalysis also
tends to display smaller and less variable residual bias than the bias-
corrected historical GCM simulation. This suggests the bias-correction
methods are likely to perform more consistently when the correcting
smaller biases.
4.3. Evaluation of streamflow simulations
Streamflow simulations generated using bias-corrected rainfall are
considerably less biased than those generated using the raw downscaled
GCM and reanalysis rainfall, and the variability of the bias is consider­
ably smaller (Fig. 8). A median negative bias of approximately 0.1 mm/
day (~ <10%) exists in mean streamflow simulations generated using
bias-corrected rainfall and the bias correction methods that consider
autocorrelation reduce this bias by up to 2% of the mean daily stream­
flow. However, the bias does not manifest equally across all flow per­
centiles for all bias correction methods. The bias correction methods that
do not consider autocorrelation tend to produce streamflow with smaller
bias for low streamflow percentiles and much larger bias for the highest
streamflow percentiles compare to those that do consider autocorrela­
tion. For the low streamflow percentiles, while there are substantial
differences in between the bias correction methods in percentage terms,
in absolute terms there are very small. However, for the high streamflow
percentiles, both the large differences between the bias correction
Fig. 8. Simulated historical-period streamflow bias (streamflow simulations using bias-corrected downscaled rainfall minus simulations using AWAP rainfall in
percentage and mm/day) for a range of daily flow percentiles, for streamflow simulations forced by downscaled historical GCM (top panel) and reanalysis (lower
panel) simulated rainfall. The box plots show the range across the combinations of 11 catchments, GCMs and downscaling versions. Boxes representing the inter­
quartile range are divided by a line representing the median, and whiskers represent the entire range of combinations.
10
Journal of Hydrology 619 (2023) 129322
methods in percentage terms do manifest in large difference in absolute
terms as well. This suggests the smaller bias in mean daily flow as a
result of considering the autocorrelation in the rainfall bias-correction is
primarily due to the lower bias in the high streamflow percentiles. Biases
in the streamflow simulations generated using the bias-corrected GCM
rainfall are also typically larger than the simulations generated using
bias-corrected reanalysis rainfall when autocorrelation in rainfall is not
considered, while they behave similarly when autocorrelation is
considered.
In the temperate catchments considered in this study, high percentile
streamflow predominantly results from multi-day wet sequences that
refill catchment water stores. Therefore, the ability of a bias-correction
method to produce multi-day wet sequences in bias-corrected time series
will influence the bias in high-percentile streamflow simulations. Our
results indicate that the multi-day wet sequences and high-percentile
streamflow simulations can only be realistically reproduced using
bias-correction methods that consider autocorrelation.
The importance of multi-day sequences of rainfall to produce high
streamflow percentiles may also explain why when autocorrelation is
not considered, biases in streamflow simulations produced using the
bias-corrected reanalysis rainfall are smaller than those produced using
the bias-corrected GCM. As reanalysis products are generated by
assimilating atmospheric observations, after downscaling they are more
likely to reflect actual temporal climate sequences than uninitialized
GCMs. However, even though the downscaled reanalysis is more likely
to reproduce realistic temporal climate sequences, bias in high-
percentiles of streamflow simulations is likely to still be present unless
bias-correction methods consider autocorrelation.
We further illustrate the effects of allowing for autocorrelation in the
rainfall bias-correction method by examining its effects on the bias in the
high percentile flow accumulations over 3- and 10-day periods and the
length of low- and high-flow sequences (Fig. 9). Differences between the
rainfall bias-correction methods are minimal for the 90th percentile 3-
and 10-day streamflow accumulations. This is also true for lower
D.E. Robertson et al.
Fig. 9. Bias in metrics of multi-day streamflow totals and the duration of very-high (>90th percentile) and low (25th percentile) flow periods, for streamflow
simulations forced by downscaled historical GCM (top panel) and reanalysis (lower panel) simulated rainfall.
percentiles, not shown. However, for the 95th and 99th percentile 3- and
10-day streamflow accumulations, the rainfall bias-correction methods
that consider autocorrelation do display lower bias those that neglect
autocorrelation. These very high percentile 3- and 10-day streamflow
accumulations require multi-day sequences high rainfall amounts to
occur, which seems only to be possible if autocorrelation is considered in
the bias-correction method. However, accumulations for the 90th, and
lower, percentile streamflow accumulations could possibly occur as a
result of a multi-day rainfall sequence or during the recession following
a very high streamflow event when effects of rainfall on streamflow are
reduced, and therefore the effects of including autocorrelation in the
bias correction method are minimal.
Bias-correcting rainfall forcing reduces bias in the length of simu­
lated high and low flow periods. Bias in the length of both high and low
flow periods is also influenced by the bias-correction method with the
methods considering autocorrelation displaying lower bias that those
that don’t. The hierarchical bias-correction methods also display lower
bias than the non-hierarchical method. For the low flow periods, the
bias-correction methods that consider autocorrelation produce close to
zero bias, particularly for the simulations produce using bias-corrected
GCM data. However, for the high flow periods, the negative biases of
the simulations generated using raw downscaled translate into positive
biases for the simulations using bias-corrected rainfall, albeit of a
smaller magnitude. This suggests that order of the ARMA model adopted
for the bias-correction may be too high for the actual rainfall
observations.
Projections of streamflow are often used to assess the adequacy of a
range of water resources management strategies, including reservoir
reliability analyses that are sensitive to streamflow accumulations over
periods of months and years. We assess the impact of the different bias-
11
Journal of Hydrology 619 (2023) 129322
correction methods on the multi-month streamflow accumulations
(Fig. 10). At all timescales, the bias of streamflow simulations generated
using bias corrected rainfall is lower than the bias of simulations
generated using the raw downscaled GCM and reanalysis rainfall. As
with the 3- and 10-day accumulations differences between the bias
correction methods are small for the 90th percentile 1-, 3-, 6-, and 12-
month streamflow accumulations. Differences do exist for the 95th
and 99th percentile accumulations with the bias-correction methods
that consider autocorrelation displaying biases that are closer to zero
than those that don’t consider autocorrelation.
5. Discussion
Here we have described modifications to standard quantile–quantile
matching methods that can address the limitations in using bias-
corrected rainfall for streamflow simulation (Charles et al., 2020; Teng
et al., 2015; Teutschbein and Seibert, 2012). The modifications involve
applying quantile mapping simultaneously to daily and multi-day, in
this paper monthly, rainfall, and by explicitly accounting for differences
in the autocorrelation structures of observed and downscaled GCM
rainfall. Our result show that allowing for difference in autocorrelation
improve rainfall sequencing metrics and that under cross-validation the
hierarchical approach produces slightly smaller bias in mean rainfall
than simple daily quantile–quantile mapping.
The study of Charles et al. (2020) found that bias-corrected rainfall
led to under-estimation of simulated mean annual streamflow and in
high flow percentiles. Our results produced using a standard quanti­
le–quantile method demonstrate similar under-estimation of mean
streamflow and of high flow percentiles reported by Charles et al.
(2020). While our results show that the under-estimation of streamflow,
D.E. Robertson et al.
Fig. 10. Bias in metrics of monthly and multi-month streamflow accumulations, for streamflow simulations forced by downscaled historical GCM (top panel) and
reanalysis (lower panel) simulated rainfall.
particularly high flow percentiles, is reduced by both modifications to
standard quantile mapping we introduce, the greatest improvement
arises from allowing for differences in rainfall autocorrelation between
observed and downscaled GCM rainfall. In the catchments considered in
this study, streamflow dynamics are strongly influenced by high and low
frequency climate variability. Our results suggest that inadequate rep­
resentation of high frequency variability, as characterised by rainfall
autocorrelation, leads to underestimation of high streamflow percentiles
and overall negative bias in streamflow simulations. Therefore, methods
for correcting bias in climate change projections for hydrological ap­
plications require rainfall autocorrelation to be corrected in addition to
the properties of the daily rainfall distribution. Conceptually, the hier­
archical quantile mapping approach also allows for corrections to be
made to the amplitude of low frequency variability. Evaluation of the
benefits of the hierarchical approach to quantile mapping for correcting
low frequency variability will be investigated in a future study.
In this study, we have evaluated the effects of our bias-correction
approaches applied to downscaled GCM simulations and reanalysis for
historical periods. The most common application of bias correction
methods is in the assessment of the impacts of future climate change.
Hydrological climate change studies typically characterise the changes
in streamflow simulations between a historical and future period using
the same downscaled GCM product. Therefore, the ability to reduce bias
in a GCM-forced streamflow simulations for historical periods relative to
the simulations forced by observed climate data, may not necessarily
result in materially different conclusions on the effects of climate
change. Investigations into the sensitivity of climate change projections
will be reported in a future study.
This study has applied bias-correction methods that adjust the mean,
variance and skewness of the marginal distribution and temporal cor­
relation structure. The methods have been evaluated using an
12
Journal of Hydrology 619 (2023) 129322
application to correct downscaled GCM and reanalysis for historical
periods with concurrent, but assumed asynchronous, observations. To
correct bias in downscaled GCM projections of climate changes requires
assumptions to be made about the consistency of the parameters of the
bias-corrections between historical and future periods. One approach is
to assume that the parameters inferred using historical observations and
GCM simulations can be applied to future periods (Charles et al., 2020;
Potter et al., 2020). If the change between the historical and future
periods is large, this approach is potentially limited by the ability of the
parametric marginal distribution to extrapolate beyond the range of
data used in parameter estimation. It also assumes that the autocorre­
lation of downscaled GCM simulations, and observations, in the trans­
formed space does not change.
An alternative approach is to preserve some or all changes in
distributional characteristics between historical and future downscaled
GCM projections in the distribution of the observations and apply
quantile mapping using modified marginal distributions. This approach
has been used to preserve changes in the mean (Cannon, 2018; Mehrotra
and Sharma, 2016) and temporal or spatial correlation (Bárdossy and
Pegram, 2012; Mehrotra and Sharma, 2016), or full marginal cumula­
tive density function (Robin et al., 2019) between historical and future
downscaled GCM projections as a part of a quantile mapping algorithm.
The potential limitation with this approach, particularly if parametric
descriptions of marginal distributions are adopted, is that parameters
can be conditionally dependent meaning that the process of adjustment
of individual properties is not straightforward. Further investigation is
needed to establish the most appropriate approach to apply quantile
mapping to future projections when changes between the historical and
future periods are large. Such an investigation would require historical
data with changes similar in magnitude to be able to validate any
findings.
D.E. Robertson et al.
The hierarchical approach to bias correction introduced in this paper
adopted a two-level hierarchy. Extension of the hierarchical structure to
more than two levels may be desirable to better represent variability at
different temporal scales or to handle seasonal effects in a single model.
While extension of the hierarchical structure is possible, as the number
of levels in the hierarchy increases parameter estimation becomes
increasingly challenging. Each additional layer in the hierarchy requires
an additional numerical integration in the computation of the likelihood
function. Therefore, even when computationally efficient numerical
integration methods are used, parameter estimation may become
computationally infeasible from a practical perspective. In the current
study, parameter estimation for the two-level hierarchical approach
required considerably more computational time than the non-
hierarchical equivalent, and therefore even using a three-layer model
may be computationally prohibitive.
In this study we apply bias-correction to a single variable at a single
location. Hydrological applications are likely to also require coherent
bias-corrected GCM data for multiple variables and or locations. The
approach used here to consider temporal correlations as a part of the
bias correction adapts approaches used to model spatial and inter-
variable correlation structure (Bárdossy and Pegram, 2012; Cannon,
2018). Therefore, generating bias-corrected data that display appro­
priate spatial and intervariable correlations is a direct extension of the
bias-correction described here. However, increasing the number of
correlation dimensions considered can induce instability in some anal­
ogous bias-correction methods and ultimately degrade desired statistical
features, e.g. spatial correlations, primarily due to the limited data
available to estimate high-dimension correlation structures (François
et al., 2020). Extending the approach described here to consider spatial
and inter-variable correlation would therefore require investigation to
mitigate against potential instabilities, which may include parameter­
ized correlation structures or other methods to reduce the number of
effective dimensions.
Several authors argue that stochastic bias-corrections are necessary
to overcome the inability of many GCM and RCM models to reproduce
the fine scale spatial and temporal variability (Mao et al., 2015; Maraun,
2016; Robin et al., 2019; Yuan et al., 2019). An element of stochasticity
can be generated using the bias-correction methods introduced in this
paper that consider autocorrelation, and all similar methods. Step 4 of
the bias correction procedure in the methods that allow for autocorre­
lation, rotates standard normal variates to remove any correlation,
before Step 5 applies a different rotation to instil correlations that reflect
the observations. Theoretically after Step 4 the resultant variates are
independent. In this study, we maintain the order of the independent
variates between steps 4 and 5, however as they are independent these
variates could be reordered to introduce an element of stochasticity in
the bias-corrected data. This stochasticity would primarily be different
of climate sequences that all follow the transformed marginal distribu­
tion of the observations.
The catchments we have investigated in this study are limited to the
temperate zones of south-eastern Australia. While the catchments do
have diverse hydrological characteristics, including one catchment that
is intermittent, the rainfall characteristics are broadly similar for all
catchments. These catchments display cool wet winters, where rainfall is
primarily from extra-tropical frontal weather systems, and warm, dry
summers. Therefore, the benefits of including autocorrelation in rainfall
bias-correction methods may be limited to similar temperate regions.
Further work is required to investigate the efficacy of the bias-correction
methods introduced in this manuscript regions with differing rainfall
seasonality and processes, for example in tropical and monsoonal re­
gions, where rainfall persistence may be better represented in the
downscaled GCM and reanalysis products or of lessor importance for
streamflow simulation.
Finally, in this study we used dynamically downscaled simulations
from a subset of host CMIP3 GCMs to demonstrate our method. CMIP5
and CMIP6 provide more recent climate simulation and projection data
13
Journal of Hydrology 619 (2023) 129322
with newer generations of climate models that are higher resolution and
improved parameterizations. Bias in the raw GCM rainfall output from
all CMIP experiments tends to be very large and therefore for this study
we used dynamically downscaled simulations. Dynamical downscaling
of GCM output can add value by reducing bias, particularly in areas of
complex topography (Di Virgilio et al., 2020). Since commencing this
work, new downscaled GCM data forced by CMIP5 models has been
released (Nishant et al., 2021). While these new simulations show
reduced bias and improved seasonal patterns in precipitation, biases
remain large requiring the correction for hydrological applications
(Nishant et al., 2021). Therefore, bias correction methods such as those
introduced here will continue to be required for hydrological impact
modelling.
6. Conclusions
Global climate models provide important insights into future climate
change. However, inconsistencies between the statistics of downscaled
GCM simulations and observations mean that bias-correction is an in­
tegral part of any assessment of the hydrological consequences of
climate change. While a wide range of techniques have been developed
to correct bias in different aspects of GCM simulations, extending from
simple univariate methods to approaches that explicitly consider spatial
temporal and inter-variable dependence structures, there are few com­
parisons of the impact of different bias-correction assumptions on hy­
drological simulations. This paper uses a consistent statistical
framework to investigate the importance of (i) simultaneously correct­
ing bias at multiple time scales, and (ii) explicitly handling rainfall
autocorrelation in quantile mapping of GCM rainfall for hydrological
simulation. Four quantile mapping methods are applied to correct bias
in dynamically downscaled reanalysis and historical GCM projections of
rainfall for 11 catchments in south-eastern Australia and the perfor­
mance of bias-corrected rainfall and streamflow simulations is
evaluated.
All quantile mapping methods investigated can effectively eliminate
bias in monthly and annual rainfall totals. Quantile mapping methods
that consider differences in the temporal dependence (autocorrelation)
structure of GCM and observed rainfall are most effective in reducing
bias in rainfall sequencing statistics, such as probability of consecutive
wet or dry days. For streamflow simulations, mean and high streamflow
percentiles over multiple time periods are underestimated when
generated using rainfall that is corrected with quantile mapping
methods that do not consider differences in the temporal dependence
structure of GCM and observed rainfall. Rainfall forcing generated using
quantile mapping methods that correct temporal dependence (autocor­
relation) structures produce in streamflow simulations with lower, often
close to zero, bias in mean and high percentiles estimates across time
period of days to months.
In this study we investigated alternative bias correction methods for
historical periods. Further investigations will assess the sensitivity of
future projections to bias-correction methods, including the importance
of explicitly preserving changes in some or all the distributional char­
acteristics of GCM simulations between future and historical periods.
Given our findings on the importance of explicitly handling rainfall
autocorrelation in quantile mapping for hydrological applications,
future work will also investigate the most appropriate methods to
characterise temporal, and where necessary spatial and inter-variable,
dependence structures.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
David E. Robertson: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software,
Formal analysis, Investigation, Validation, Writing – original draft,
Writing – review & editing. Francis H.S. Chiew: Conceptualization,
Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Writing – review &
editing. Nicholas Potter: Conceptualization, Data curation,
D.E. Robertson et al.
Investigation, Writing – review & editing.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare the following financial interests/personal re­
lationships which may be considered as potential competing interests:
David E. Robertson reports financial support was provided by Victoria
Department of Environment Land Water and Planning. Francis Chiew
reports financial support was provided by Victoria Department of
Environment Land Water and Planning. Nick Potter reports financial
support was provided by Victoria Department of Environment Land
Water and Planning.
Data availability
Data will be made available on request.
Acknowledgements
This work was conducted on the traditional lands of the Boonwur­
rung, Wurundjeri peoples of the Kulin Nation and also the Ngunnawal
and Ngambri peoples. We acknowledge their continuing custodianship
of these lands and the rivers that flow through them, and pay our re­
spects to their elders, past and present. We also acknowledge the
traditional custodians of the catchments and rivers used in this study.
This research has been supported by the Victorian Water and Climate
Initiative. We thank Hongxing Zheng and Steve Charles (both CSIRO) for
supplying the catchment data. An R package used for bias correction is
available on request; license conditions apply.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2023.129322.
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