Evaluation of six precipitation products in the Mekong River Basin

Abstract

Continuous and reliable precipitation records are essential for hydrological and meteorological studies. In the Mekong River Basin (MRB), there are many satellite-based and gauge-based precipitation products. It is necessary to evaluate the reliabilities of these precipitation products. In this study, we evaluated six widely used precipitation products in the MRB on a monthly scale, namely Asian Precipitation Highly Resolved Observational Data Integration Towards Evaluation of water resources v1101 (APHRODITE), Global Precipitation Climatology Center v2018 (GPCC), Climatic Research Unit Time-Series v4.03 (CRU), Climate Hazards group InfraRed Precipitation with Stations v2.0 (CHIRPS), Multi-Source Weighted-Ensemble Precipitation v1.0 (MSWEP), and Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information using Artificial Neural Networks-Climate Data Record (PERSIANN-CDR). Two evaluation methods, namely the reference gauge method and the hydrological simulation method, were used. For the reference gauge method, APHRODITE had the best consistency with precipitation observations at 25 reference gauges among the six precipitation products. For the hydrological simulation method, hydrological model using APHRODITE as the input obtained the most accurate runoff simulations among the six precipitation products. Thus, APHRODITE could be a reliable precipitation product in the MRB. The evaluation results provide a useful reference for the hydrological and meteorological study in the MRB.