High-resolution Precipitation Estimates Research Articles

A Retrospective Hydrological Uncertainty Analysis Using Precipitation Estimation Ensembles for a Poorly Gauged Basin in High Mountain Asia

Abstract We study the impact of uncertain precipitation estimates on simulated streamflows for the poorly gauged Yarlung Tsangpo basin (YTB), high mountain Asia (HMA). A process-based hydrological model at 0.5-km resolution is driven by an ensemble of precipitation estimation products (PEPs), including analyzed ground observations, high-resolution precipitation estimates, climate data records, and reanalyses over the 2008–15 control period. The model is then forced retrospectively from 1983 onward to obtain seamless discharge estimates till 2007, a period for which there is very sparse flow data coverage. Whereas temperature forcing is considered deterministic, precipitation is sampled from the predictive distribution, which is obtained through processing PEPs by means of a probabilistic processor of uncertainty. The employed Bayesian processor combines the PEPs and outputs the predictive densities of daily precipitation depth accumulation as well as the probability of precipitation occurrence, from which random precipitation fields for probabilistic model forcing are sampled. The predictive density of precipitation is conditional on the precipitation estimation predictors that are bias corrected and variance adjusted. For the selected HMA study site, discharges simulated from reanalysis and climate data records score lowest against observations at three flow gauging points, whereas high-resolution satellite estimates perform better, but are still outperformed by precipitation fields obtained from analyzed observed precipitation and merged products, which were corrected against ground observations. The applied methodology indicates how missing flows for poorly gauged sites can be retrieved and is further extendable to hydrological projections of climate. Significance Statement We show how to use different precipitation estimates, like computer simulations of weather or satellite observations, in conjunction with all available ground measurements in regions with generally poor meteorological and flow measurement infrastructure. We demonstrate how it is possible to retrieve past unobserved river flows using these estimates in combination with a hydrological computer model for streamflow simulations. The method can help us to better understand the hydrology of poorly gauged regions that play an important role in the distribution of water resources and can be affected by future changes. We applied the method to a large transboundary river basin in China. This basin holds water needed by large, densely populated regions of India that may become water constrained by warmer climate.

SPATIAL DOWNSCALING OF GPM IMERG V06 GRIDDED PRECIPITATION USING MACHINE LEARNING ALGORITHMS

Abstract. According to recent studies, Remote sensing data plays a significant role in filling gaps in the poor gauge station, particularly at high elevations and with complex underlying surface features. In order to provide high-resolution precipitation estimates over the poor gauge and with complex terrain areas, downscaling low-resolution satellite precipitation estimates using various environmental variables. In this paper, we tried to downscale the GPM IMERG V06 with a resolution of (0.1° × 0.1°) nearly 10km to (1km × 1 km) using four machine learning algorithms namely, Decision Trees, Multiple Linear Regression, Support Vector Regressor and random forest. Vegetation indices Normalized difference in vegetation index (NDVI), Topography, Land Surface Temperature (LST), and latitude and longitude. This framework can downscale the 0.1° resolution of the GPM IMERG precipitation product to 1 km, by determining the importance of features, and automatically optimizing the model parameters. Additionally, ground recorded data from rain gauge stations have validated downscaled precipitation products. Spatial downscaling can generally increase the accuracy of GPM IMERG gridded precipitation data and results reveal that spatial downscaling is an acceptable way of investigating the precipitation over Taiwan.

Combining APHRODITE Rain Gauges-Based Precipitation with Downscaled-TRMM Data to Translate High-Resolution Precipitation Estimates in the Indus Basin

Understanding the pixel-scale hydrology and the spatiotemporal distribution of regional precipitation requires high precision and high-resolution precipitation data. Satellite-based precipitation products have coarse spatial resolutions (~10 km–75 km), rendering them incapable of translating high-resolution precipitation variability induced by dynamic interactions between climatic forcing, ground cover, and altitude variations. This study investigates the performance of a downscaled-calibration procedure to generate fine-scale (1 km × 1 km) gridded precipitation estimates from the coarser resolution of TRMM data (~25 km) in the Indus Basin. The mixed geographically weighted regression (MGWR) and random forest (RF) models were utilized to spatially downscale the TRMM precipitation data using high-resolution (1 km × 1 km) explanatory variables. Downscaled precipitation estimates were combined with APHRODITE rain gauge-based data using the calibration procedure (geographical ratio analysis (GRA)). Results indicated that the MGWR model performed better on fit and accuracy than the RF model to predict the precipitation. Annual TRMM estimates after downscaling and calibration not only translate the spatial heterogeneity of precipitation but also improved the agreement with rain gauge observations with a reduction in RMSE and bias of ~88 mm/year and 27%, respectively. Significant improvement was also observed in monthly (and daily) precipitation estimates with a higher reduction in RMSE and bias of ~30 mm mm/month (0.92 mm/day) and 10.57% (3.93%), respectively, after downscaling and calibration procedures. In general, the higher reduction in bias values after downscaling and calibration procedures was noted across the downstream low elevation zones (e.g., zone 1 correspond to elevation changes from 0 to 500 m). The low performance of precipitation products across the elevation zone 3 (>1000 m) might be associated with the fact that satellite observations at high-altitude regions with glacier coverage are most likely subjected to higher uncertainties. The high-resolution grided precipitation data generated by the MGWR-based proposed framework can facilitate the characterization of distributed hydrology in the Indus Basin. The method may have strong adoptability in the other catchments of the world, with varying climates and topography conditions.

Hydrometeorological analysis of the 12 and 13 September 2019 widespread flash flooding in eastern Spain

Abstract. On 12 and 13 September 2019, a long-lasting heavy precipitation episode (HPE) affected the València, Murcia and Almería regions in eastern Spain. Observed rainfall amounts were close to 500 mm in 48 h, being the highest cumulative precipitation registered in some rain gauges for the last century. Subsequent widespread flash flooding caused seven fatalities and estimated economical losses above EUR 425 million. High-resolution precipitation estimates from weather radar observations and flood response from stream gauges are used in combination with a fully distributed hydrological model to examine the main hydrometeorological processes within the HyMeX programme. This HPE was characterized by successive, well-organized convective structures that impacted a spatial extent of 7500 km2, with rainfall amounts equal to or larger than 200 mm. The main factors driving the flood response were quasi-stationarity of heavy precipitation, very dry initial soil moisture conditions and large storage capacities. Most of the examined catchments exhibited a dampened and delayed hydrological response to cumulative precipitation: until runoff thresholds were exceeded, infiltration-excess runoff generation did not start. This threshold-based hydrological behaviour may impact the shape of flood peak distributions, hindering strict flood frequency statistical analysis due to the generally limited lengths of data records in arid and semi-arid catchments. As an alternative, a power-law relationship is analytically derived to specifically link flood magnitude to rainfall amount, with the parameters depending on basin and precipitation features. This power law could aid in developing empirical envelope curves so as to assess hydrologic risk in arid and semi-arid catchments with a threshold-based hydrological behaviour.

Deep Neural Network High Spatiotemporal Resolution Precipitation Estimation (Deep-STEP) Using Passive Microwave and Infrared Data

Abstract Recent developments in “headline-making” deep neural networks (DNNs), specifically convolutional neural networks (CNNs), along with advancements in computational power, open great opportunities to integrate massive amounts of real-time observations to characterize spatiotemporal structures of surface precipitation. This study aims to develop a CNN algorithm, named Deep Neural Network High Spatiotemporal Resolution Precipitation Estimation (Deep-STEP), that ingests direct satellite passive microwave (PMW) brightness temperatures (Tbs) at emission and scattering frequencies combined with infrared (IR) Tbs from geostationary satellites and surface information to automatically extract geospatial features related to the precipitable clouds. These features allow the end-to-end Deep-STEP algorithm to instantaneously map surface precipitation intensities with a spatial resolution of 4 km. The main advantages of Deep-STEP, as compared to current state-of-the-art techniques, are 1) it learns and estimates complex precipitation systems directly from raw measurements in near–real time, 2) it uses the automatic spatial neighborhood feature extraction approach, and 3) it fuses coarse-resolution PMW footprints with IR images to reliably retrieve surface precipitation at a high spatial resolution. We anticipate our proposed DNN algorithm to be a starting point for more sophisticated and efficient precipitation retrieval systems in terms of accuracy, fine spatial pattern detection skills, and computational costs.

Stacking machine learning models versus a locally weighted linear model to generate high-resolution monthly precipitation over a topographically complex area

This study applied a stacked generalization ensemble approach to generate high-resolution precipitation estimates and compared its performance with an optimized local weighted linear regression (LWLR) algorithm, a well-known local precipitation-elevation interpolation method incorporating physiographical factors. The stacked generalization ensemble consists of multilayer perceptron neural network (MLP), support vector machine (SVM), and random forest (RF) combined through a meta-learning algorithm with/without rescanning input covariates. Sixteen input covariates, including 2 topographic features, 5 cloud properties, 5 environmental variables, 3 precipitation products (PPs), and inverse distance weighted (IDW) estimates as the precipitation background field were fed into the machine learning models. Hold out approach was adopted for performance evaluation in which 50% of the 174 gauges were used for training, and the rest was used for validation. The results indicated that the overall monthly MAE, RMSE, and rBias of the proposed stacking model for the validation dataset were 3.3%, 6.8%, and 50%, respectively, less than that of the RF model, which is the best individual model. Also, the stacking model outperformed LWLR by decreasing monthly MAE, RMSE, and rBias 10.7%, 19.1%, and 28.6%, respectively. Further analysis implied that (1) the stacked model is more robust than LWLR and less dependent on the density of gauges, thus suitable for areas with scarce gauge coverage; (2) comparing the spatial distribution of mean monthly precipitation maps, generated by stacking and LWLR models, stacking algorithm can successfully screen out the bulls' eyes of background IDW precipitation field, and both patterns are consistent with the topography of the area; and (3) the stacking scheme is found to have a better extrapolation ability than LWLR over high elevations.

Hydrological evaluation of high-resolution precipitation estimates from the WRF model in the Third Pole river basins

AbstractIn this study, two sets of precipitation estimates based on the regional Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF) –the high Asia refined analysis (HAR) and outputs with a 9 km resolution from WRF (WRF-9km) are evaluated at both basin and point scales, and their potential hydrological utilities are investigated by driving the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) large-scale land surface hydrological model in seven Third Pole (TP) basins. The regional climate model (RCM) tends to overestimate the gauge-based estimates by 20–95% in annual means among the selected basins. Relative to the gauge observations, the RCM precipitation estimates can accurately detect daily precipitation events of varying intensities (with absolute bias < 3 mm). The WRF-9km exhibits a high potential for hydrological application in the monsoon-dominated basins in the southeastern TP (with NSE of 0.7–0.9 and bias of -11% to 3%), while the HAR performs well in the upper Indus (UI) and upper Brahmaputra (UB) basins (with NSE of 0.6 and bias of -15% to -9%). Both the RCM precipitation estimates can accurately capture the magnitudes of low and moderate daily streamflow, but show limited capabilities in flood prediction in most of the TP basins. This study provides a comprehensive evaluation of the strength and limitation of RCMs precipitation in hydrological modeling in the TP with complex terrains and sparse gauge observations.

Extensive evaluation of IMERG precipitation for both liquid and solid in Yellow River source region

The Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for Global Precipitation Measurement (IMERG) produces high-resolution precipitation estimates and serves as an invaluable data source for data-scarce and ungauged basins. This study comprehensively evaluates two near-real time products (IMERG-E and IMERG-L) and a post-real time dataset (IMERG-F) of IMERG V06B from 2014 to 2019 on basin and grid scales in the Yellow River source region, a data-sparse basin in the northeastern Tibetan Plateau. Results show that the three IMERG products can well depict the spatial distribution of precipitation in the study area. Compared with IMERG-E and IMERG-L, the gauge-adjusted IMERG-F shows better agreement and event detection on both basin and grid scale, yet is limited in improving data accuracy. The near-real time products, IMERG-E and IMERG-L, underestimate precipitation across the basin (~−37.82% and ~−38.55%, respectively). At the same time, post-real time product exhibits negative errors in drier areas and positive errors in wetter regions that are roughly separated by the basin's 3900 m contour. The correlation, error metrics, and detecting ability of the three products upgrade from northwest to southeast as the climate becomes wet. Temporal properties exhibit dependence on meteorological conditions. Specifically, the performance in the wet season is superior to that in the dry season. For instance, the normalized root mean square error for IMERG-F was reduced by 55.10% from dry season to wet season. IMERG products' capability to detect precipitation is affected by temporal scale, intensity, and phase. The reliability of these satellite precipitation products increases when the time interval extends from daily to monthly. IMERG can better estimate moderate precipitation, especially in the range of 5–10 mm/d. The products generally perform worse for solid precipitation than for liquid one. However, interactions of precipitation phases and intensities lead to a decrease in accuracy for light precipitation (<5 mm/d) but an increase for moderate events (≥5 mm/d) when the phase transforms from solid to liquid. Uncertainty of reference data results in an underestimation of product quality. These findings provide a useful reference for the application of IMERG products in cold mountainous areas and reveal the needs for an exhaustive calibration, especially for solid precipitation.

Evaluation of GPM-Era Satellite Precipitation Products on the Southern Slopes of the Central Himalayas Against Rain Gauge Data

The Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission provides high-resolution precipitation estimates globally. However, their accuracy needs to be accessed for algorithm enhancement and hydro-meteorological applications. This study applies data from 388 gauges in Nepal to evaluate the spatial-temporal patterns presented in recently-developed GPM-Era satellite-based precipitation (SBP) products, i.e., the Integrated Multi-satellite Retrievals for GPM (IMERG), satellite-only (IMERG-UC), the gauge-calibrated IMERG (IMERG-C), the Global Satellite Mapping of Precipitation (GSMaP), satellite-only (GSMaP-MVK), and the gauge-calibrated GSMaP (GSMaP-Gauge). The main results are as follows: (1) GSMaP-Gauge datasets is more reasonable to represent the observed spatial distribution of precipitation, followed by IMERG-UC, GSMaP-MVK, and IMERG-C. (2) The gauge-calibrated datasets are more consistent (in terms of relative root mean square error (RRMSE) and correlation coefficient (R)) than the satellite-only datasets in representing the seasonal dynamic range of precipitation. However, all four datasets can reproduce the seasonal cycle of precipitation, which is predominately governed by the monsoon system. (3) Although all four SBP products underestimate the monsoonal precipitation, the gauge-calibrated IMERG-C yields smaller mean bias than GSMaP-Gauge, while GSMaP-Gauge shows the smaller RRMSE and higher R-value; indicating IMERG-C is more reliable to estimate precipitation amount than GSMaP-Gauge, whereas GSMaP-Gauge presents more reasonable spatial distribution than IMERG-C. Only IMERG-C moderately reproduces the evident elevation-dependent pattern of precipitation revealed by gauge observations, i.e., gradually increasing with elevation up to 2000 m and then decreasing; while GSMaP-Gauge performs much better in representing the gauge observed spatial pattern than others. (4) The GSMaP-Gauge calibrated based on the daily gauge analysis is more consistent with detecting gauge observed precipitation events among the four datasets. The high-intensity related precipitation extremes (95th percentile) are more intense in regions with an elevation below 2500 m; all four SBP datasets have low accuracy (&lt;30%) and mostly underestimated (by &gt;40%) the frequency of extreme events at most of the stations across the country. This work represents the quantification of the new-generation SBP products on the southern slopes of the central Himalayas in Nepal.

On the Uncertainty of High-Resolution Hourly Quantitative Precipitation Estimates in California

AbstractThe Bay Area of California and surrounding region receives much of its annual precipitation during the October–March wet season, when atmospheric river events bring periods of heavy rain that challenge water managers and may exceed the capacity of storm sewer systems. The complex terrain of this region further complicates the situation, with terrain interactions that are not currently captured in most operational forecast models and inadequate precipitation measurements to capture the large variability throughout the area. To improve monitoring and prediction of these events at spatial and temporal resolutions of interest to area water managers, the Bay Area Advanced Quantitative Precipitation Information project was developed. To quantify improvements in forecast precipitation, model validation studies require a reference dataset to compare against. In this paper we examine 10 gridded, high-resolution (≤10 km, hourly) precipitation estimates to assess the uncertainty of high-resolution quantitative precipitation estimates (QPE) in areas of complex terrain. The products were linearly interpolated to 3-km grid spacing, which is the resolution of the operational forecast model to be validated. Substantial differences exist between the various products at accumulation periods ranging from hourly to annual, with standard deviations among the products exceeding 100% of the mean. While the products seem to agree fairly well on the timing of precipitation, intensity estimates differ, sometimes by an order of magnitude. The results highlight both the need for additional observations and the need to account for uncertainty in the reference dataset when validating forecasts in this area.

A Temporal Disaggregation Approach for TRMM Monthly Precipitation Products Using AMSR2 Soil Moisture Data

Accurate and spatially-distributed precipitation information is vital to the study of the regional hydrological cycle and water resources, as well as for environmental management. To provide high spatio-temporal resolution precipitation estimates over insufficient rain-gauge areas, great efforts have been taken in using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and other land surface variables to improve the spatial resolution of satellite precipitation datasets. However, the strong spatio-temporal heterogeneity of precipitation and the “hysteresis phenomenon” of the relationship between precipitation and vegetation has limited the application of these downscaling methods to high temporal resolutions. To overcome this limitation, a new temporal downscaling method was proposed in this study by introducing daily soil moisture data to explore the relationship between precipitation and the soil moisture increment index. The performance of this proposed temporal downscaling was assessed by downscaling the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) precipitation data from a monthly scale to a daily scale over the Hekouzhen to Tongguan of the Yellow River in 2013, and the downscaled daily precipitation datasets were validated with in-situ measurement from 23 rainfall observation stations. The validation results indicate that the downscaled daily precipitation agrees with the rain gauge observations, with a correlation coefficient of 0.59, a mean error range of 1.70 mm, and a root mean square error of 5.93 mm. In general, the monthly precipitation decomposition method proposed in this paper has combined the advantage of both microwave remote sensing products. It has acceptable precision and can generate precipitation on a diurnal scale. It is an important development in the field of using auxiliary data to perform temporal downscaling. Furthermore, this method also provides a reference example for the temporal downscaling of other low temporal resolution datasets.

Evaluation of the Quality of Precipitation Products: A Case Study Using WRF and IMERG Data over the Central United States

Abstract Hydrological applications rely on the availability and quality of precipitation products, especially model- and satellite-based products for use in areas without ground measurements. It is known that the quality of model- and satellite-based precipitation products is complementary: model-based products exhibit high quality during cold seasons while satellite-based products are better during warm seasons. To explore the complementary behavior of the quality of the precipitation products, this study uses 2-m air temperature as auxiliary information to evaluate high-resolution (0.1°/hourly) precipitation estimates from the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model and from the version 5 Integrated Multisatellite Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) algorithm (i.e., early and final runs). The products are evaluated relative to the reference NCEP Stage IV precipitation estimates over the central United States during August 2015–July 2017. Results show that the IMERG final-run estimates are nearly unbiased, while the IMERG early-run and the WRF estimates are positively biased. The WRF estimates exhibit high correlations with the reference data when the temperature falls below 280 K. The IMERG estimates, both early and final runs, do so when the temperature exceeds 280 K. Moreover, the complementary behavior of the WRF and the IMERG products conditioned on air temperature does not vary with either season or location.

The First Comparisons of IMERG and the Downscaled Results Based on IMERG in Hydrological Utility over the Ganjiang River Basin

Rainfall information is a prerequisite to and plays a vital role in driving hydrological models. However, limited by the observation methods, the obtained precipitation data, at present, are still too coarse. In this study, a new downscaling method was proposed to obtain high spatial resolution (~1 km/hourly) precipitation estimates based on Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) data at hourly scale. Compared with original IMERG data, the downscaled precipitation results showed the similar spatial patterns with those of original IMERG data, but with finer spatial resolution. In addition, the downscaled precipitation estimates were further analyzed to quantify their improvements using the Coupled Routing and Excess STorage (CREST) model across Ganjiang River basin. Compared with the observed streamflow, the downscaled precipitation results showed satisfying hydrological performance, with Nash-Sutcliffe Coefficient of Efficiency (NSCE), Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Relative Bias (BIAS), and Correlation Coefficient (CC). The improvement in terms of four statistic metrics in terms of streamflow simulation also indicated great potential of hydrological utility for the downscaled precipitation results.

Radar and Rain Gauge Merging-Based Precipitation Estimation via Geographical–Temporal Attention Continuous Conditional Random Field

An accurate, high-resolution precipitation estimation based on rain gauge and radar observations is essential in various meteorological applications. Although numerous studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of merging two information sources rather than using separate sources, approaches that simultaneously consider the local radar reflectivity, the neighborhood rain gauge observations, and the temporal information are much less common. In this paper, we present a new framework for real-time quantitative precipitation estimation (QPE). By formulating the QPE as a continuous conditional random field (CCRF) learning problem, the spatiotemporal correlations of precipitation can be explored more thoroughly. Based on the CCRF, we further improve the accuracy of the precipitation estimation by introducing geographical and temporal attention. Specifically, we first present a data-driven weighting scheme to merge the first law of geography into the proposed framework, and hence, the neighborhood sample closer to the estimated grid can receive more attention. Second, the temporal attention penalizes the similarity between two adjacent timestamps via the discrepancy of two-view estimates, which can model the local temporal consistency and tolerate some drastic changes. A sufficient evaluation is conducted on 11 rainfall processes that occurred in 2015, and the results confirm the advantage of our proposal for real-time precipitation estimation.

Hydrologic Evaluation of NWP-Adjusted CMORPH Estimates of Hurricane-Induced Precipitation in the Southern Appalachians

Abstract Satellite-retrieved precipitation has the potential to support flood modeling in mountainous areas. However, to reach this potential satellite estimates need to be corrected for the severe underestimation exhibited in orography-induced heavy precipitation events (HPEs). This paper assesses an existing satellite precipitation error correction technique driven by high-resolution numerical weather prediction (NWP) simulations of HPEs in complex terrain. The study is based on NOAA Climate Prediction Center morphing technique (CMORPH) high-resolution precipitation estimates of six such events induced by hurricane landfalls in the southern Appalachian mountainous region. A distributed hydrological model (Coupled Routing and Excess Storage model) is applied to evaluate the impact of the proposed satellite precipitation error correction on flood simulations for 20 basins of various sizes in this mountainous region. The results demonstrate significant improvements due to the NWP-based adjustment technique in terms of both the precipitation error characteristics and corresponding runoff simulations. These improvements are shown to be comparable to those from the postprocessed gauge-adjusted CMORPH precipitation product, which is promising for advancing hydrologic uses of satellite rainfall in mountainous areas lacking ground observations.

Identification of recharge zones in the Lower Mississippi River alluvial aquifer using high-resolution precipitation estimates

Summary Water resources in the lower Mississippi River alluvial valley play a critical role in agricultural productivity due to the widespread use of irrigation during the growing season. However, the unknown specifics of surface–atmosphere feedbacks in the region, along with diminishing groundwater availability and the non-sustainable trend in irrigation draws from the alluvial aquifer, makes it difficult for water resource managers to make sound decisions for future water sustainability. As a result, it is crucial to identify spatial and temporal associations between local rainfall patterns and groundwater levels to determine the influence of precipitation on regional aquifer recharge. Specifically, it is critical to define the recharge zones of the aquifer so that rainfall distribution can be used to assess potential groundwater recovery. This project addresses the issue of defining areas of recharge in the lower Mississippi River alluvial aquifer (LMRAA) through an assessment of historical precipitation variability using high-resolution radar-derived precipitation estimates. A rotated principal component analysis (RPCA) of both groundwater and precipitation data from October through April is used to define locations where aquifer levels show the greatest variability, with a stepwise regression approach used to define areas where rainfall and groundwater levels show the strongest association. Results show that the greatest recharge through direct rainfall is along the Tallahatchie River basin in the northeastern Mississippi Delta, with recharge along the periphery of the LMRAA likely a result of direct water flux from surface hydrologic features.

A new satellite-based monthly precipitation downscaling algorithm with non-stationary relationship between precipitation and land surface characteristics

Remote sensing is an important tool to monitor precipitation over regions with sparse rain gauge networks. To provide high-resolution precipitation estimates over un-gauged areas, great efforts have been taken to downscale low-resolution satellite precipitation datasets using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) based on the assumption that precipitation can be simulated by vegetation and topography proxies at various spatial scales. However, the non-stationarity of the relationship between precipitation and vegetation or topography has not been appropriately considered when low-resolution satellite precipitation datasets are downscaled using NDVI and DEM in previous studies. To overcome this limitation, a new downscaling algorithm was proposed in this study by introducing a regional regression model termed as geographically weighted regression (GWR) to explore the spatial heterogeneity of the precipitation–NDVI and precipitation–DEM relationships. The performance of this new downscaling algorithm was assessed by downscaling the latest version of monthly TRMM precipitation datasets (referred to TRMM 3B43 V7) over the eastern Tibetan Plateau and the TianShan Mountains from 0.25° (about 25km) to 1km spatial resolution, and the downscaled precipitation datasets were validated against ground observations measured by rain gauges. The validation results indicate that the high-resolution precipitation datasets obtained through the new algorithm not only performed better than the traditional downscaling algorithms, but also had higher accuracy than the original TRMM 3B43 V7 dataset. Besides, we found that the performance of this new algorithm was largely dependent on the accuracy of the original TRMM 3B43 V7 data. We therefore recommend considering the non-stationarity of the precipitation–NDVI and precipitation–DEM relationships in the downscaling process, and demonstrate the possibility of downscaling satellite precipitation with NDVI and DEM at monthly temporal scale.

Comparison and evaluation of high resolution precipitation estimation products in Urmia Basin-Iran

This study focuses on the comparison and evaluation of six daily 0.25°×0.25° high resolution precipitation data sets (PERSIANN, CMORPH-RAW, CMORPH-CRT, TMPA-RT, TMPA-V7 and APHRODITE). The comparison is performed during years 2000 till 2011 in Urmia basin of Iran and the local daily rainfall gauge observations are considered as the reference data set. Several statistical, categorical and graphical evaluation techniques are used to compare and evaluate the product performances and quantify their biases from reference data. APHRODITE and TMPA-V7, by benefiting from gauge observations during their adjustment procedures present better estimations while among near real-time products, PERSIANN is able to remarkably outperform other estimations. Both CMORPH products has shown to have great overestimation (more than 200%) over the observations while PERSIANN and TMPA-RT tend to underestimate rainfall on average about 26% and 78% respectively. TMPA-V7 and APHRODITE also overestimate observations about 26 and 3 percentages. Compared to near real-time version of products, TMPA-V7 has succeeded to significantly improve TMPA-RT performance while CMORPH-CRT has completely unsuccessful in its mission. Although all rainfall estimation products are characterized by considerable biases in comparison to the gauge observations, detailed analysis indicate that some of them have the capability of becoming a valuable source of high resolution precipitation estimation data set, especially over purely gauged areas.

An improved procedure for the validation of satellite-based precipitation estimates

The objective of this study is to propose and test a new procedure to improve the validation of remote-sensing, high-resolution precipitation estimates. Our recent studies show that many conventional validation measures do not accurately capture the unique error characteristics in precipitation estimates to better inform both data producers and users. The proposed new validation procedure has two steps: 1) an error decomposition approach to separate the total retrieval error into three independent components: hit error, false precipitation and missed precipitation; and 2) the hit error is further analyzed based on a multiplicative error model. In the multiplicative error model, the error features are captured by three model parameters. In this way, the multiplicative error model separates systematic and random errors, leading to more accurate quantification of the uncertainties. The proposed procedure is used to quantitatively evaluate the recent two versions (Version 6 and 7) of TRMM’s Multi-sensor Precipitation Analysis (TMPA) real-time and research product suite (3B42 and 3B42RT) for seven years (2005–2011) over the continental United States (CONUS). The gauge-based National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Climate Prediction Center (CPC) near-real-time daily precipitation analysis is used as the reference. In addition, the radar-based NCEP Stage IV precipitation data are also model-fitted to verify the effectiveness of the multiplicative error model. The results show that winter total bias is dominated by the missed precipitation over the west coastal areas and the Rocky Mountains, and the false precipitation over large areas in Midwest. The summer total bias is largely coming from the hit bias in Central US. Meanwhile, the new version (V7) tends to produce more rainfall in the higher rain rates, which moderates the significant underestimation exhibited in the previous V6 products. Moreover, the error analysis from the multiplicative error model provides a clear and concise picture of the systematic and random errors, with both versions of 3B42RT have higher errors in varying degrees than their research (post-real-time) counterparts. The new V7 algorithm shows obvious improvements in reducing random errors in both winter and summer seasons, compared to its predecessors V6. Stage IV, as expected, surpasses the satellite-based datasets in all the metrics over CONUS. Based on the results, we recommend the new procedure be adopted for routine validation of satellite-based precipitation datasets, and we expect the procedure will work effectively for higher resolution data to be produced in the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) era.

Evaluation of High-Resolution Precipitation Estimates from Satellites during July 2012 Beijing Flood Event Using Dense Rain Gauge Observations

Satellite-based precipitation estimates products, CMORPH and PERSIANN-CCS, were evaluated with a dense rain gauge network over Beijing and adjacent regions for an extremely heavy precipitation event on July 21 2012. CMORPH and PEERSIANN-CSS misplaced the region of greatest rainfall accumulation, and failed to capture the spatial pattern of precipitation, evidenced by a low spatial correlation coefficient (CC). CMORPH overestimated the daily accumulated rainfall by 22.84% while PERSIANN-CCS underestimated by 72.75%. In the rainfall center, both CMORPH and PERSIANN-CCS failed to capture the temporal variation of the rainfall, and underestimated rainfall amounts by 43.43% and 87.26%, respectively. Based on our results, caution should be exercised when using CMORPH and PERSIANN-CCS as input for monitoring and forecasting floods in Beijing urban areas, and the potential for landslides in the mountainous zones west and north of Beijing.