Regionalization of the Modified Bartlett–Lewis rectangular pulse stochastic rainfall model across the Korean Peninsula

• The parameters of the MBLRP model were regionalized across the Korean Peninsula.
• The parameters were spatially interpolated to produce the maps.
• The proposed model showed better performance in reproducing most statistics.

The six parameters of the Modified Bartlett–Lewis Rectangular Pulse (MBLRP) model were regionalized across the Korean Peninsula for all 12 calendar months. The parameters of the MBLRP model were estimated at each of the 59 rain gauges and they were spatially interpolated using the Ordinary Kriging method in order to produce maps. The parameter search space used in the parameter estimation process was repetitively narrowed through cross-validation in order to remove the impact of the multi-modality of the MBLRP model. The synthetic rainfall time series generated based on the parameter maps successfully reproduced the various statistical properties of the observed rainfall, such as mean, variance, lag-1 autocorrelation, and probability of zero rainfall at a wide range of time accumulation levels (e.g. hourly through daily). The maps representing the general rainfall characteristics, such as the average rainfall depth per rain storm, the average rain storm duration, the average number of rain cells per rain storm, and the average rain cell duration were also produced based on the estimated parameters. Lastly, some helpful tips in regionalizing the parameters of the Poisson cluster rainfall models are discussed.