An examination of summer precipitation over Asia based on TRMM/TMI

Abstract

A 6-year dataset of summer monthly mean precipitation derived from Tropical Precipitation Measurement Mission (TRMM)-Microwave Imager (TMI) was used to delineate the spatial distribution patterns of precipitation throughout Asian areas, which indicates that there are three rainfall centers located at the northern coast of the Bay of Bengal, the South China Sea and the western equatorial Pacific Warm Pool, respectively. Based upon the analysis of horizontal distribution, the capability of TMI for characterizing terrestrial and maritime precipitation has been evaluated and compared with Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) dataset. It was found that TMI and GPCP are well consistent with each other, while a few significant differences occur at several regions over land. By investigating rainfall estimates over six specific locations in Asia, a systematic underestimation of TMI was demonstrated, which could be explained by the inherent deficiency within TMI terrestrial algorithm relying on scattering signal from ice particles in a precipitation system. A further analysis shows that the highly inhomogeneous distribution of rain gauges employed by GPCP contributes a great deal to the significant discrepancy between GPCP and TMI, especially over regions surrounding the Tibetan Plateau where rain gauges are quite scarce.