Benchmarking convection-permitting climate simulations for hydrometeorological characterizations: a comparative study of WRF-SAAG and observation-based products in Chile
- 1University of Chile (Santiago, Chile)
- 2Advanced Mining Technology Center (Santiago, Chile)
- 3Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María (Valparaíso, Chile)
Abstract
Over the last few years, significant progress has been made in the development of convection-permitting climate models (CPCMs), especially in improving precipitation estimates in regions with complex terrain. Recently, the South American Affinity Group (SAAG) developed a novel high-resolution dataset – hereafter referred to as the WRF-SAAG dataset – by dynamically downscaling the ERA5 reanalysis using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model over South America for the period 2000–2021. Here, we evaluate WRF-SAAG outputs across continental Chile and compare them with two widely used gridded meteorological products, CR2MET and RF-MEP, which combine reanalysis data with in situ measurements. In particular, we analyze spatial differences among climatological estimates from the three products, and we assess the quality of daily precipitation and daily maximum and minimum temperature simulations using observations from meteorological stations over the period April/2001–March/2018. We also compare the potential of these climate datasets for hydrological modeling using a conceptual, bucket-style rainfall-runoff model, evaluating the results against streamflow observations, satellite remote sensing (SRS) products, and a snow water equivalent (SWE) reanalysis product. We found that the detection accuracy varied within each Chilean macrozone, with worse performance in the Far North (17.5–26° S) and Patagonia (43.7–56° S). The evaluation of daily precipitation against station observations using Tang's Kling–Gupta efficiency (KGE T ) reveals that all datasets performed better in reproducing precipitation in rainy regions (median KGE T ≥ 0.65 in the Southern macrozone), while in arid areas such as the Near North during summer, the median KGE T was negative. The CR2MET product consistently provided the best performance for extreme precipitation and temperature, partly because it includes information from the stations used for evaluation. Finally, the application of the hydrological model shows that although WRF-SAAG simulations achieved runoff estimations comparable to the best observation-based gridded products (i.e., CR2MET or RF-MEP), with the best results in the southern macrozone they provided relatively lower performance in evapotranspiration (ET) and soil moisture estimates, as well as SWE simulations of competitive quality. More broadly, the results presented here show that, despite some remaining challenges in arid climate regions, kilometer-scale climate models can deliver valuable information for hydrological applications at the daily time scale in Chile.
Versions
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BibTeX
@article{segoviaescafi2026benchmarking,
title = {{Benchmarking convection-permitting climate simulations for hydrometeorological characterizations: a comparative study of WRF-SAAG and observation-based products in Chile}},
author = {Sofía Segovia-Escafi and Pablo A. Mendoza and Miguel Lagos-Zúñiga and Lucía Scaff and Andreas F. Prein},
journal = {Hydrology and Earth System Sciences},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.5194/hess-30-6481-2026},
url = {https://hess.copernicus.org/articles/30/6481/2026/},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Benchmarking convection-permitting climate simulations for hydrometeorological characterizations: a comparative study of WRF-SAAG and observation-based products in Chile
AU - Sofía Segovia-Escafi
AU - Pablo A. Mendoza
AU - Miguel Lagos-Zúñiga
AU - Lucía Scaff
AU - Andreas F. Prein
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/22
JO - Hydrology and Earth System Sciences
DO - 10.5194/hess-30-6481-2026
UR - https://hess.copernicus.org/articles/30/6481/2026/
AB - Over the last few years, significant progress has been made in the development of convection-permitting climate models (CPCMs), especially in improving precipitation estimates in regions with complex terrain. Recently, the South American Affinity Group (SAAG) developed a novel high-resolution dataset – hereafter referred to as the WRF-SAAG dataset – by dynamically downscaling the ERA5 reanalysis using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model over South America for the period 2000–2021. Here, we evaluate WRF-SAAG outputs across continental Chile and compare them with two widely used gridded meteorological products, CR2MET and RF-MEP, which combine reanalysis data with in situ measurements. In particular, we analyze spatial differences among climatological estimates from the three products, and we assess the quality of daily precipitation and daily maximum and minimum temperature simulations using observations from meteorological stations over the period April/2001–March/2018. We also compare the potential of these climate datasets for hydrological modeling using a conceptual, bucket-style rainfall-runoff model, evaluating the results against streamflow observations, satellite remote sensing (SRS) products, and a snow water equivalent (SWE) reanalysis product. We found that the detection accuracy varied within each Chilean macrozone, with worse performance in the Far North (17.5–26° S) and Patagonia (43.7–56° S). The evaluation of daily precipitation against station observations using Tang's Kling–Gupta efficiency (KGE T ) reveals that all datasets performed better in reproducing precipitation in rainy regions (median KGE T ≥ 0.65 in the Southern macrozone), while in arid areas such as the Near North during summer, the median KGE T was negative. The CR2MET product consistently provided the best performance for extreme precipitation and temperature, partly because it includes information from the stations used for evaluation. Finally, the application of the hydrological model shows that although WRF-SAAG simulations achieved runoff estimations comparable to the best observation-based gridded products (i.e., CR2MET or RF-MEP), with the best results in the southern macrozone they provided relatively lower performance in evapotranspiration (ET) and soil moisture estimates, as well as SWE simulations of competitive quality. More broadly, the results presented here show that, despite some remaining challenges in arid climate regions, kilometer-scale climate models can deliver valuable information for hydrological applications at the daily time scale in Chile.
SN - 1607-7938
ER -