Rainfall Generator for the Rhine Basin: Sensitivity to the composition of the feature vector and passive simulations

Since the mid 1990s rainfall generators for the Rhine and Meuse basins have been developed. These rainfall generators form part of the GRADE instrument for the Generation of Rainfall and Discharge Extremes (de Wit and Buishand, 2007). This report focuses on some developments of the Rainfall generator for the Rhine basin during the period June 2009 to November 2010 as part of the KNMI contribution to the Waterdienst-Deltares-KNMI collaboration regarding GRADE. Three topics are considered: i) sensitivity of the temporal pattern correlation for the composition of the feature vector, ii) Rainfall simulations for the Rhine basin based on catchment average data rather than station data and, iii) passive simulation of precipitation and temperature in the Meuse basin based on simulations for the Rhine basin. This last topic may seem a bit of an off-topic in a report on the Rainfall generator for the Rhine basin. However, this work gives a first indication of the possibility to develop a unified Rhine-Meuse rainfall generator.