Spatiotemporal Evaluation and Estimation of Precipitation of Multi-Source Precipitation Products in Arid Areas of Northwest China—A Case Study of Tianshan Mountains

Abstract

In the arid areas of Northwest China, especially in the Tianshan Mountains, the scarcity of meteorological stations has brought some challenges in collecting accurate information to describe the spatial distribution of precipitation. In this study, the applicability of TRMM3B42, GPM IMERG, and MSWEP V2.2 in different regions of Tianshan Mountain is comprehensively evaluated by using ten statistical indicators, three classification indicators, and variation coefficients at different time–space scales, and the mechanism of accuracy difference of precipitation products is discussed. The results show that: (1) On the annual and monthly scales, the correlation between GPM and measured precipitation is the highest, and the ability of three precipitation products to capture precipitation in the wet season is stronger than that in the dry season; (2) On the daily scale, TRMM has the highest ability to estimate the frequency of light rain events, and MSWEP has the highest ability to monitor extreme precipitation events; (3) On the spatial scale, GPM has the highest fitting degree with the spatial distribution of precipitation in Tianshan Mountains, MSWEP is the closest to the precipitation differentiation pattern in Tianshan Mountains; (4) The three satellite products generally perform best in low and middle longitude regions and middle elevation regions. This study provides a reference for the selection of grid precipitation datasets for hydrometeorological simulation in northwest arid areas and also provides a basis for multi-source data assimilation and fusion.