How Reliable Are Satellite Rainfall Estimates across Complex Topo-Climatic Regions?
Publication: World Environmental and Water Resources Congress 2024
ABSTRACT
A reliable and accurate precipitation estimation is of great importance for various hydro-meteorological applications. Satellite rainfall estimates (SREs) provide an alternative to sparse and inconsistent gauge networks. Although SREs have been useful in estimating precipitation at different spatial and temporal scales, some uncertainty still exists in their estimations. It is, therefore, necessary to conduct a thorough analysis of SREs before they can be used. As far as SREs evaluations are concerned, no comprehensive studies in the Central Europe (CEU) region compare SREs. Thus, it is essential to perform a comprehensive performance analysis of SREs throughout this region. Throughout the past decade, a variety of SREs have been developed to meet a variety of needs. A wide range of precipitation data can be obtained through the PERSIANN family of products on an hourly to yearly basis with almost global coverage and a fine resolution. This study aims to evaluate the validity of all PERSIANN family products concerning daily and monthly precipitation variation. Further analysis of extreme precipitation events was carried out based on the estimates provided by the PERSIANN family of products. We used in situ data from GSOD (Global Surface Summary of the Day) and ECA&D (European Climate Assessment and Dataset) as a benchmark from 2010 to 2018 to evaluate PERSIANN family products. Several statistical and categorical metrics were used in conjunction with ETCCDI (Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices) indices to assess the accuracy of SREs. The results showed that all SREs were less reliable in the daily time scale with CC < 0.4. Nevertheless, PERSIANN-CDR and PERSIANN were more reliable on the daily time scale, with RMSE = 5.91 mm/day and CC = 0.37, respectively. Contrary to this, the monthly results indicated that PERSIANN -CDR, with CC of 0.67 and RMSE of 46.37 mm/month, outperformed other SREs in most regions. Using HSS to evaluate the detection abilities of SREs, it was shown that PERSSIAN-CDR has the best performance based on HSS, which varies between 0.3 and 0.5. Conversely, PERSIANN and PDIR-NOW are the best-performing products, respectively. Based on the extreme precipitation analysis, PERSIANN-CCS and PERSIANN-CDR had reasonable accuracy for CDD (consecutive dry days) and CWD (consecutive wet days) indexes with Ras (relative accuracy) within the optimal range (0.9−1.1). In addition, results indicated that PERSIANN-CDR had reasonable accuracy for rare precipitation events (R10mm and R99pTOT). A significant inconsistency was observed among the different SREs according to various criteria, which requires caution when using them. These findings provide valuable insight for the PERSIANN developer team regarding improving their estimation algorithm, especially over complex regions.
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World Environmental and Water Resources Congress 2024
Pages: 1557 - 1571
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Published online: May 16, 2024
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