Abstract
Satellite-based precipitation products are expected to offer an alternative to ground-based rainfall estimates in the present and the foreseeable future. In this paper, we evaluate the performance of TRMM 3B42 precipitation products in the Yangtze River basin for the period of 2003~2010. The results are as follows: (1) the performance of RTV7 (V7) products is generally better than that of RTV6 (V6) in the Yangtze River basin, and the percentage of best performance (bias ranging within −10%~10%) for the annual mean precipitation increases from 21.72% (54.79%) to 36.70% (59.85%) as the RTV6 (V6) improved to the RTV7 (V7); (2) the TMPA products have better performance in the wet period than that in the dry period in the Yangtze River basin; (3) the performance of TMPA precipitation has been affected by the elevation and a downward trend can be found with the increasing elevation in the Yangtze River basin. The average CC between the V7 and observed precipitation in July decreases from 0.71 to 0.40 with the elevation of gauge stations increasing from 500 m below to 4000 m above in the Yangtze River basin. More attention should be paid to the influence of complex climate and topography.
Highlights
Seasonal and interannual climate variability in the subtropical humid monsoon region is mainly determined by changes in precipitation [1]
There has been a marked improvement for the RTV7 in the mid-lower Yangtze reaches and an improvement for the evaluation of the RTV7 in the upper Yangtze reaches compared with that of the RTV6 products. Both the V6 and V7 (Figures 3(b) and 3(d)) have similar spatial patterns of precipitation biases in the Yangtze River basin and most of the precipitation bias ranges from −10% to 10% for both of them (Table 1)
Higher CC values can be found between the TMPA products and the observed precipitation for each of the TMPA products in the wet periods than that of dry periods in the Yangtze River basin
Summary
Seasonal and interannual climate variability in the subtropical humid monsoon region is mainly determined by changes in precipitation [1]. Accurate precipitation data with high spatial and temporal resolution are deemed necessary for various fields of research, such as climate change, water resources management, and meteorological disaster prevention [2,3,4,5]. Satellite-based precipitation products are expected to offer an alternative to ground-based precipitation estimates in the present and the foreseeable future [8]. Satellite-based precipitation products offer a potential alternative or supplement to ground-based rainfall estimates over sparsely gauged or ungauged basins [6, 7, 10,11,12,13]. As the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite completes more than a decade of operation, it has provided researchers throughout the world with a large volume of Advances in Meteorology rainfall data for the validation of atmospheric and climate models [14]. TRMM rainfall products have been widely used in the fields of hydrology, meteorology, and agricultural science [17,18,19]
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