Assessment of satellite-based rainfall estimates in urban areas in different geographic and climatic regions

Abstract

This paper presents an assessment of the 3B42 research version rainfall product from NASA’s Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA). The study provides new results of TMPA data accuracy in urban areas and highlights trends associated with the climatological indicators of temperature and relative humidity in cities. Ten years (1998-2007) of TMPA data were analyzed for three case study cities in the United States (Houston, Atlanta, and Las Vegas) and one in Korea (Cheongju), representing semi-arid to humid climates. At each location, an urbanized river basin and non-urbanized river basin were selected and comparisons between TMPA and rain gage observations were made for recorded storm events in the study period, the largest storm events by total depth, and selected hurricanes and topical storms. The results indicate TMPA data match well with rain gage observations at all locations. TMPA is slightly underestimated for semi-arid regions and overestimated for humid regions. The relative magnitude of TMPA rain event accumulation compared to rain gage accumulation is noted to be smaller for urbanized watersheds and high intensity events. The correlation of TMPA accuracy with temperature and relative humidity and the analysis of accuracy by season indicate TMPA is more accurate for convective rainfall events. This suggests a possible linkage between the observed urban-modified temperatures, hypothesized enhanced convection, and improved TMPA accuracy in urban areas.