An Assessment Of Cligen And Wxgen Weather Generators Used In The Upper Reaches Of The Yangtze River

CLIGEN and WXGEN are the weather generators in WEPP and SWAT models. They need to be validated before used in the Upper Reaches of the Yangtze River, because of the unique mountain climate there. In this study, five stations were selected from different geomorphologic regions in the study area. At each site, 40 years (from 1971 to 2010) observed daily data was used to initiate and validate the two kinds of weather generators. The result shows that using the observed statistical parameters to replace the American parameters in WEPP is necessary. The CLIGEN and WXGEN are not suitable to be used as generator for daily climate data. They are more suitable to be used as generators for monthly climate data. The CLIGEN is more accurate and reliable than WXGEN. Monthly precipitation and temperature generated by both CLIGEN and WXGEN is generally lower than observed data.