Abstract
Satellite precipitation products provide alternative precipitation data in mountain areas. This study aimed to assess the performance of the latest Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Integrated Multi-satellite Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) version 5 (IMERG V5) and Global Satellite Mapping of Precipitation version 7 (GSMaP V7) products and their hydrological utilities over the Tibetan Plateau (TP). Here, two IMERG Final Run products (uncalibrated IMERG (IMERG-UC) and gauge-calibrated IMERG (IMEEG-C)) and two GSMaP products (GSMaP Moving Vector with Kalman Filter (GSMaP-MVK) and gauge-adjusted GSMaP (GSMaP-Gauge)) were evaluated from April 2014 to March 2017. Results show that all four satellite precipitation products could generally capture the spatial patterns of precipitation over the TP. The two gauge-adjusted products were more consistent with the ground measurements than the satellite-only products in terms of statistical assessment. For hydrological simulation, IMERG-UC and GSMaP-MVK showed unsatisfactory performance for hydrological utility, while GSMaP-Gauge demonstrated comparable performance with gauge reference data, suggesting that GSMaP-Gauge can be selected for hydrological application in the TP. Our study also indicates that accurately measuring light rainfall and winter snow is still a challenging task for the current satellite precipitation retrievals.
Highlights
Precipitation is a key variable of the global water cycle and the driving force for land surface hydrological processes [1,2,3]
All precipitation sets shared similar spatial distribution: the mean precipitation decreased from the southeast to the northwest
The reason for this is the effect of the Himalayas, which intercept the moisture from the Indian Ocean monsoon and induce rainfall
Summary
Precipitation is a key variable of the global water cycle and the driving force for land surface hydrological processes [1,2,3]. Reliable precipitation input is crucial for hydrological modeling and prediction [4]. Rainfall observations are operated through rain gauges and ground-based weather radars. Measurements from these in situ observational networks are restricted for the remote areas and mountain regions [5]. Precipitation observation networks are sparse or nonexistent in many parts of the TP due to the complex terrain, harsh climate, and high cost [7]. Satellite precipitation products are practical means of detecting rainfall distribution over vast regions that are poorly gauged, and provide a potential complementary source beyond ground in situ data [8,9]
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