Abstract Stochastic simulations of spatiotemporal patterns of hydroclimatic processes, such as precipitation, are needed to build alternative but equally plausible inputs for water‐related design and management, and to estimate uncertainty and assess risks. However, while existing stochastic simulation methods are mature enough to deal with relatively small domains and coarse spatiotemporal scales, additional work is required to develop simulation tools for large‐domain analyses, which are more and more common in an increasingly interconnected world. This study proposes a methodological advancement in the CoSMoS framework, which is a flexible simulation framework preserving arbitrary marginal distributions and correlations, to dramatically decrease the computational burden and make the algorithm fast enough to perform large‐domain simulations in short time. The proposed approach focuses on correlated processes with mixed (zero‐inflated) Uniform marginal distributions. These correlated processes act as intermediates between the target process to simulate (precipitation) and parent Gaussian processes that are the core of the simulation algorithm. Working in the mixed‐Uniform space enables a substantial simplification of the so‐called correlation transformation functions, which represent a computational bottle neck in the original CoSMoS formulation. As a proof of concept, we simulate 40 years of daily precipitation records from 1,000 gauging stations in the Mississippi River basin. Moreover, we extend CoSMoS incorporating parent non‐Gaussian processes with different degrees of tail dependence and suggest potential improvements including the separate simulation of occurrence and intensity processes, and the use of advection, anisotropy, and nonstationary spatiotemporal correlation functions.

Abstract Stochastic simulations of spatiotemporal patterns of hydroclimatic processes, such as precipitation, are needed to build alternative but equally plausible inputs for water‐related design and management, and to estimate uncertainty and assess risks. However, while existing stochastic simulation methods are mature enough to deal with relatively small domains and coarse spatiotemporal scales, additional work is required to develop simulation tools for large‐domain analyses, which are more and more common in an increasingly interconnected world. This study proposes a methodological advancement in the CoSMoS framework, which is a flexible simulation framework preserving arbitrary marginal distributions and correlations, to dramatically decrease the computational burden and make the algorithm fast enough to perform large‐domain simulations in short time. The proposed approach focuses on correlated processes with mixed (zero‐inflated) Uniform marginal distributions. These correlated processes act as intermediates between the target process to simulate (precipitation) and parent Gaussian processes that are the core of the simulation algorithm. Working in the mixed‐Uniform space enables a substantial simplification of the so‐called correlation transformation functions, which represent a computational bottle neck in the original CoSMoS formulation. As a proof of concept, we simulate 40 years of daily precipitation records from 1,000 gauging stations in the Mississippi River basin. Moreover, we extend CoSMoS incorporating parent non‐Gaussian processes with different degrees of tail dependence and suggest potential improvements including the separate simulation of occurrence and intensity processes, and the use of advection, anisotropy, and nonstationary spatiotemporal correlation functions.

Realistic stochastic simulation of hydro-environmental fluxes in space and time, such as rainfall, is challenging yet of paramount importance to inform environmental risk analysis and decision making under uncertainty. Here, we advance random fields simulation by introducing the concepts of general velocity fields and general anisotropy transformations. This expands the capabilities of the so-called Complete Stochastic Modeling Solution (CoSMoS) framework enabling the simulation of random fields (RF's) preserving: (a) any non-Gaussian marginal distribution, (b) any spatiotemporal correlation structure (STCS), (c) general advection expressed by velocity fields with locally varying speed and direction, and (d) locally varying anisotropy. We also introduce new copula-based STCS's and provide conditions guaranteeing their positive definiteness. To illustrate the potential of CoSMoS, we simulate RF's with complex patterns and motion mimicking rainfall storms moving across an area, spiraling fields resembling weather cyclones, fields converging to (or diverging from) a point, and colliding air masses. The proposed methodology is implemented in the freely available CoSMoS R package.

Nature manifests itself in space and time. The spatiotemporal complexity of processes such as precipitation, temperature, and wind, does not allow purely deterministic modeling. Spatiotemporal random fields have a long history in modeling such processes, and yet a single unified framework offering the flexibility to simulate processes that may differ profoundly does not exist. Here we introduce a blueprint to efficiently simulate spatiotemporal random fields that preserve any marginal distribution, any valid spatiotemporal correlation structure, and intermittency. We suggest a set of parsimonious yet flexible marginal distributions and provide a rule of thumb for their selection. We propose a new and unified approach to construct flexible spatiotemporal correlation structures by combining copulas and survival functions. The versatility of our framework is demonstrated by simulating conceptual cases of intermittent precipitation, double‐bounded relative humidity, and temperature maxima fields. As a real‐word case we simulate daily precipitation fields. In all cases, we reproduce the desired properties. In an era characterized by advances in remote sensing and increasing availability of spatiotemporal data, we deem that this unified approach offers a valuable and easy‐to‐apply tool for modeling complex spatiotemporal processes.