Assessment of Satellite-Derived Precipitation Products for the Beijing Region

Abstract

Performance of four satellite precipitation products, namely, the China Meteorological Forcing Dataset (CMFD), Climate Prediction Center morphing technique (CMORPH), as well as 3B42 calibrated and 3B42-RT dataset, which are derived from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) and Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA), were evaluated from daily to annual temporal scales over Beijing, using observations from 36 ground meteorological stations. Five statistical properties and three categorical metrics were used to test the results. The assessment showed that all four satellite precipitation products captured the temporal variability of precipitation. Although four satellite precipitation products captured the trend of more precipitation in the northeastern regions, all four products showed different distribution from the observations for 2001–2015 over Beijing. All precipitation products tended to overestimate moderate precipitation events and underestimate heavy precipitation events over Beijing, except for 3B42RT, which tended to overestimate most precipitation events. By comparison, the CMFD performed better than the CMORPH, 3B42 calibrated, and 3B42-RT datasets, having the higher correlation coefficient and low root mean squared difference, and mean absolute difference at all temporal scales. The average correlation coefficient of the CMFD, CMORPH, 3B42 calibrated, and 3B42-RT products for all 36 stations were 0.70, 0.60, 0.59, and 0.54 for daily precipitation and 0.78, 0.32, 0.74, and 0.44 for monthly precipitation. Overall, the CMFD was the most reliable for the Beijing region.