Abstract
Abstract. High-resolution satellite precipitation products are very attractive for studying the hydrologic processes in mountainous areas where rain gauges are generally sparse. Four high-resolution satellite precipitation products are evaluated using gauge measurements over different climate zones of the Tibetan Plateau (TP) within a 6 yr period from 2004 to 2009. The four satellite-based precipitation data sets are: Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Multisatellite Precipitation Analysis 3B42 version 6 (TMPA) and its Real Time version (TMPART), Climate Prediction Center Morphing Technique (CMOPRH) and Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information using Artificial Neural Network (PERSIANN). TMPA and CMORPH, with higher correlation coefficients and lower root mean square errors (RMSEs), show overall better performance than PERSIANN and TMPART. TMPA has the lowest biases among the four precipitation data sets, which is likely due to the correction process against the monthly gauge observations from global precipitation climatology project (GPCP). TMPA also shows large improvement over TMPART, indicating the importance of gauge-based correction on accuracy of rainfall. The four products show better agreement with gauge measurements over humid regions than that over arid regions where correlation coefficients are less than 0.5. Moreover, the four precipitation products generally tend to overestimate light rainfall (0–10 mm) and underestimate moderate and heavy rainfall (>10 mm). Moreover, this study extracts 24 topographic variables from a DEM (digital elevation model) and uses a linear regression model to explore the bias–topography relationship. Results show that biases of TMPA and CMORPH present weak dependence on topography. However, biases of TMPART and PERSIANN present dependence on topography and variability of elevation and surface roughness plays important roles in explaining their biases.
Highlights
The Tibetan Plateau (TP) is one of the highest plateaus in the world with an average altitude of more than 4000 m a.s.l. and an area of about 2.4 million km2
To detect the satellite’s ability of delineating rain/no rain events, we adopt a set of contingency table statistics: probability of detection (POD) that measures the ratio of rain occurrences correctly detected to the total number of observed events, false alarm ratio (FAR) that measures the ratio of the number of falsely alarmed rain events to the total number of detected events, and equitable threat score (ETS) that is modified to account for hits due to random chance (Schaefer, 1990; Ebert et al, 2007)
PERSIANN generates a large mass of precipitation over the central and southern TP, while TRMM Multisatellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA) and Center Morphing Method (CMORPH) do not (Xie et al, 2007)
Summary
The Tibetan Plateau (TP) is one of the highest plateaus in the world with an average altitude of more than 4000 m a.s.l. (above sea level) and an area of about 2.4 million km. Several high-resolution precipitation products (0.25◦ and 3 hourly) by merging MW and IR data have emerged, such as Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information using Artificial Neural Networks (PERSIANN; Hsu et al, 1999; Sorooshian et al, 2000), Climate Prediction Center Morphing Method (CMORPH; Joyce et al 2004), and TRMM Multisatellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA; Huffman et al, 2007). They have been used in many different ways such as climate studies and hydrological analysis
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