Application of Copulas to Modeling Temporal Sampling Errors in Satellite-Derived Rainfall Estimates
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 12, Issue 4
Abstract
The dependence between temporal sampling error in satellite-derived rainfall estimates and rainfall rate is of scientific and practical interest. We explore the use of copulas to construct the needed joint distribution between the sampling error and the corresponding rainfall rate. Our approach is to first estimate the marginal distribution functions in a parametric way, and then use these with a number of copula functions in search of the one most appropriate. We use maximum likelihood to estimate the parameters of the copulas. We select the best-fitted parametric copula function as the one that gives the largest likelihood. Our findings have important implications for the interpretation and propagation studies of remote sensing precipitation uncertainties.
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Acknowledgments
The writers wish to thank Dr. Brian R. Nelson for providing the rainfall data set. This research was supported by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Office of Global Programs through Grant No. UNSPECIFIEDNA57WHO517 to the second writer, by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) through Grant No. NASANAG5-9664, and the NASA Earth System Science Fellowship to the first writer. The second writer also acknowledges the support of the Rose and Joseph Summers Professorship Endowment.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 12 • Issue 4 • July 2007
Pages: 404 - 408
Copyright
© 2007 ASCE.
History
Received: Oct 12, 2005
Accepted: Nov 26, 2006
Published online: Jul 1, 2007
Published in print: Jul 2007
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