Estimating Summer Precipitation Over the Tibetan Plateau With Geostatistics and Remote Sensing

Abstract

Abstract Although precipitation is important to climatology, hydrology, and agricultural research, the spatial pattern of precipitation over the Tibetan Plateau is difficult to determine because of complex surface conditions and a sparse rain gauge network. In the present article, a method we named FETCH_OCK—based on a combination of Yin et al's Fetch method (2008) and ordinary cokriging (OCK)—is proposed; it was used to estimate monthly summer precipitation over the Tibetan Plateau, which has limited rain gauge observations and a restricted satellite precipitation dataset. First, the monthly ground observations measured by rain gauges were interpolated using OCK, with a digital elevation model (DEM) as the covariant. Second, the spatial variability of the precipitation monitored by satellite was extracted from the Climate Prediction Center morphing (CMORPH) satellite precipitation dataset by calculating a parameter (FETCH) developed from Yin et al's Fetch parameter. Finally, the precipitation datasets es...