Integrating satellite and reanalysis precipitation products for SWAT hydrological simulation in the Jing River Basin, China

In hydrological studies, satellite and reanalysis precipitation products are increasingly being used to supplement gauge observation data. This study designed the composite simulation index (COSI), considering two factors: F1 (data accuracy assessment) and F2 (hydrological simulation performance), to compare the performance of the latest satellite-based and reanalysis-based precipitation products (IMERG, ERA5, ERA5-Land), the prior precipitation products (TRMM, CMADS), and the multi-source weighted-ensemble precipitation (MSWEP). The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model was then applied to compare and analyze the hydrological simulation performance of four preferred products using three data fusion methods including simple model averaging, variance-based weighted averaging, and the latest quantile-based Bayesian model averaging (QBMA). The results can be summarized as follows: (1) Reanalysis products are superior to satellite-based products in terms of F1. However, the satellite-based precipitation products exhibit less BIAS and relatively higher F2, while the MSWEP has relatively high performance on both F1 and F2. (2) Among reanalysis-based precipitation products, CMADS has the best COSI value of 0.53. Although ERA5-Land shows good performance for individual parameters, the comprehensive assessment reveals that ERA5 outperforms ERA5-Land in terms of both F1 and F2. (3) IMERG and TRMM exhibit similar spatiotemporal patterns and similar F1, but IMERG is superior in F2. (4) QBMA outperformed traditional methods in F2, improving the NS coefficient of SWAT model from 0.74 to 0.85. These findings provide a useful reference for analyzing the strengths and limitations of satellite-based and reanalysis precipitation products, and also provide valuable ideas for the combined application of multi-source precipitation products in hydrological studies.