scholarly journals Ground Validation of GPM IMERG Precipitation Products over Iran

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fatemeh Fadia Maghsood ◽  
Hossein Hashemi ◽  
Seyyed Hasan Hosseini ◽  
Ronny Berndtsson

Accurate estimation of precipitation is crucial for fundamental input to various hydrometeorological applications. Ground-based precipitation data suffer limitations associated with spatial resolution and coverage; hence, satellite precipitation products can be used to complement traditional rain gauge systems. However, the satellite precipitation data need to be validated before extensive use in the applications. Hence, we conducted a thorough validation of the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Integrated Multi-satellite Retrievals (IMERG) product for all of Iran. The study focused on investigating the performance of daily and monthly GPM IMERG (early, late, final, and monthly) products by comparing them with ground-based precipitation data at synoptic stations throughout the country (2014–2017). The spatial and temporal performance of the GPM IMERG was evaluated using eight statistical criteria considering the rainfall index at the country level. The rainfall detection ability index (POD) showed that the best IMERG product’s performance is for the spring season while the false alarm ratio (FAR) index indicated the inferior performance of the IMERG products for the summer season. The performance of the products generally increased from IMERG-Early to –Final according to the relative bias (rBIAS) results while, based on the quantile-quantile (Q-Q) plots, the IMERG-Final could not be suggested for the applications relying on extreme rainfall estimates compared to IMERG-Early and -Late. The results in this paper improve the understanding of IMERG product’s performance and open a door to future studies regarding hydrometeorological applications of these products in Iran.

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 697 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fenglin Xu ◽  
Bin Guo ◽  
Bei Ye ◽  
Qia Ye ◽  
Huining Chen ◽  
...  

Accurate estimation of high-resolution satellite precipitation products like Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) and Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) is critical for hydrological and meteorological research, providing a benchmark for the continued development and future improvement of these products. This study aims to comprehensively evaluate the Integrated Multi-Satellite Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) and TRMM 3B42V7 products at multiple temporal scales from 1 January 2015 to 31 December 2017 over the Huang-Huai-Hai Plain in China, using daily precipitation data from 59 meteorological stations. Three commonly used statistical metrics (CC, RB, and RMSE) are adopted to quantitatively verify the accuracy of two satellite precipitation products. The assessment also takes into account the precipitation detection capability (POD, FAR, CSI, and ACC) and frequency of different precipitation intensities. The results show that the IMERG and 3B42V7 present strong correlation with meteorological stations observations at annual and monthly scales (CC > 0.90), whereas moderate at the daily scale (CC = 0.76 and 0.69 for IMERG and 3B42V7, respectively). The spatial variability of the annual and seasonal precipitation is well captured by these two satellite products. And spatial patterns of precipitation gradually decrease from south to north over the Huang-Huai-Hai Plain. Both IMERG and 3B42V7 products overestimate precipitation compared with the station observations, of which 3B42V7 has a lower degree of overestimation. Relative to the IMERG, annual precipitation estimates from 3B42V7 show lower RMSE (118.96 mm and 142.67 mm, respectively), but opposite at the daily, monthly, and seasonal scales. IMERG has a better precipitation detection capability than 3B42V7 (POD = 0.83 and 0.67, respectively), especially when detecting trace and solid precipitation. The two precipitation products tend to overestimate moderate (2–10 mm/d) and heavy (10–50 mm/d) precipitation events, but underestimate violent (>50 mm/d) precipitation events. The IMERG is not found capable to detecting precipitation events of different frequencies more precisely. In general, the accuracy of IMERG is better than 3B42V7 product in the Huang-Huai-Hai Plain. The IMERG satellite precipitation product with higher temporal and spatial resolutions can be regarded a reliable data sources in studying hydrological and climatic research.


2014 ◽  
Vol 31 (9) ◽  
pp. 1902-1921 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ji-Hye Kim ◽  
Mi-Lim Ou ◽  
Jun-Dong Park ◽  
Kenneth R. Morris ◽  
Mathew R. Schwaller ◽  
...  

Abstract Since 2009, the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) has participated in ground validation (GV) projects through international partnerships within the framework of the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Mission. The goal of this work is to assess the reliability of ground-based measurements in the Korean Peninsula as a means for validating precipitation products retrieved from satellite microwave sensors, with an emphasis on East Asian precipitation. KMA has a well-developed operational weather service infrastructure composed of meteorological radars, a dense rain gauge network, and automated weather stations. Measurements from these systems, including data from four ground-based radars (GRs), were combined with satellite data from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) precipitation radar (PR) and used as a proxy for GPM GV over the Korean Peninsula. A time series of mean reflectivity differences (GR − PR) for stratiform-only and above-brightband-only data showed that the time-averaged difference fell between −2.0 and +1.0 dBZ for the four GRs used in this study. Site-specific adjustments for these relative mean biases were applied to GR reflectivities, and detailed statistical comparisons of reflectivity and rain rate between PR and bias-adjusted GR were carried out. In rain-rate comparisons, surface rain from the TRMM Microwave Imager (TMI) and the rain gauges were added and the results varied according to rain type. Bias correction has had a positive effect on GR rain rate comparing with PR and gauge rain rates. This study confirmed advance preparation for GPM GV system was optimized on the Korean Peninsula using the official framework.


2011 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathew R. Schwaller ◽  
K. Robert Morris

Abstract A prototype Validation Network (VN) is currently operating as part of the Ground Validation System for NASA’s Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission. The VN supports precipitation retrieval algorithm development in the GPM prelaunch era. Postlaunch, the VN will be used to validate GPM spacecraft instrument measurements and retrieved precipitation data products. The period of record for the VN prototype starts on 8 August 2006 and runs to the present day. The VN database includes spacecraft data from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) precipitation radar (PR) and coincident ground radar (GR) data from operational meteorological networks in the United States, Australia, Korea, and the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Satellite and ground radar data products are collected whenever the PR satellite track crosses within 200 km of a VN ground radar, and these data are stored permanently in the VN database. VN products are generated from coincident PR and GR observations when a significant rain event occurs. The VN algorithm matches PR and GR radar data (including retrieved precipitation data in the case of the PR) by calculating averages of PR reflectivity (both raw and attenuation corrected) and rain rate, and GR reflectivity at the geometric intersection of the PR rays with the individual GR elevation sweeps. The algorithm thus averages the minimum PR and GR sample volumes needed to “matchup” the spatially coincident PR and GR data types. The result of this technique is a set of vertical profiles for a given rainfall event, with coincident PR and GR samples matched at specified heights throughout the profile. VN data can be used to validate satellite measurements and to track ground radar calibration over time. A comparison of matched TRMM PR and GR radar reflectivity factor data found a remarkably small difference between the PR and GR radar reflectivity factor averaged over this period of record in stratiform and convective rain cases when samples were taken from high in the atmosphere. A significant difference in PR and GR reflectivity was found in convective cases, particularly in convective samples from the lower part of the atmosphere. In this case, the mean difference between PR and corrected GR reflectivity was −1.88 dBZ. The PR–GR bias was found to increase with the amount of PR attenuation correction applied, with the PR–GR bias reaching −3.07 dBZ in cases where the attenuation correction applied is >6 dBZ. Additional analysis indicated that the version 6 TRMM PR retrieval algorithm underestimates rainfall in case of convective rain in the lower part of the atmosphere by 30%–40%.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 347 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wan-Ru Huang ◽  
Pin-Yi Liu ◽  
Ya-Hui Chang ◽  
Chian-Yi Liu

In March 2019, Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for Global Precipitation Measurement (IMERG)-Final v6 (hereafter IMERG6) was released, with data concerning precipitation dating back to June 2000. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has suggested that researchers use IMERG6 to replace the frequently used Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM)-3B42 v7 (hereafter TRMM7), which is expected to cease operation in December 2019. This study aims to evaluate the performance of IMERG6 and TRMM7 in depicting the variations of summer (June, July, and August) precipitation over Taiwan during the period 2000–2017. Data used for the comparison also includes IMERG-Final v5 (hereafter IMERG5) and Global Satellite Mapping of Precipitation for Global Precipitation Measurement (GSMaP)-Gauge v7 (hereafter GSMaP7) during the summers of 2014–2017. Capabilities to apply the four satellite precipitation products (SPPs) in studying summer connective afternoon rainfall (CAR) events, which are the most frequently observed weather patterns in Taiwan, are also examined. Our analyses show that when using more than 400 local rain-gauge observations as a reference base for comparison, IMERG6 outperforms TRMM7 quantitatively and qualitatively, more accurately depicting the variations of the summer precipitation over Taiwan at multiple timescales (including mean status, daily, interannual, and diurnal). IMERG6 also performs better than TRMM7 in capturing the characteristics of CAR activities in Taiwan. These findings highlight that using IMERG6 to replace TRMM7 adds value in studying the spatial-temporal variations of summer precipitation over Taiwan. Furthermore, the analyses also indicated that IMERG6 outperforms IMERG5 and GSMaP7 in the examination of most of the features of summer precipitation over Taiwan during 2014–2017.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tarik Saouabe ◽  
El Mahdi El Khalki ◽  
Mohamed El Mehdi Saidi ◽  
Adam Najmi ◽  
Abdessamad Hadri ◽  
...  

<p>Recently, the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) satellite constellation measurements combined in the Integrated Multi-satellite Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) algorithm is provided. This GPM-IMERG dataset provides potentially useful precipitation data for regions with a low density of rain gauges. This study is aimed to evaluate the accuracy of the near real-time product (IMERG-E) compared to observed rainfall and its suitability for hydrological modeling over the Ghdat watershed located upstream the city of Marrakech. Several statistical indices have been computed and a hydrological model has been driven with IMERG-E rainfall to estimate its suitability to simulate floods during the period from 2011 to 2018. The following results were obtained: (1) In terms of the precipitation detection capability, the IMERG-E performs better at reproducing the different precipitation statistics at the catchment scale rather than at the pixel scale (2) compared to the rain gauge data, satellite precipitation data overestimates rainfall amounts with a relative Bias of +35.61% (3) The flood events can be simulated with the hydrological model using both the observed and the IMERG-E satellite precipitation data with a Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency coefficient of 0.58 and 0.71, respectively. The results of this study indicate that the GPM-IMERG-E precipitation estimates can be used for flood modeling in semi-arid regions such as Morocco and provide a valuable alternative to ground-based precipitation measurements.</p>


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 1883 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ziqiang Ma ◽  
Kang He ◽  
Xiao Tan ◽  
Jintao Xu ◽  
Weizhen Fang ◽  
...  

Accurate precipitation data is crucial in many applications such as hydrology, meteorology, and ecology. Compared with ground observations, satellite-based precipitation estimates can provide much more spatial information to characterize precipitation. In this study, the satellite-based precipitation products of Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for Global Precipitation Measurement (IMERG) and Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM) Multisatellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA) were firstly evaluated over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) in 2015 against ground observations at both annual and monthly scales. Secondly, random forest algorithm was used to obtain the annual downscaled results (~1 km) based on IMERG and TMPA data and the downscaled results were examined against rain gauge data. Thirdly, a disaggregation algorithm was used to obtain the monthly downscaled results based on those at annual scale. The results indicated that (1) IMERG performed better than TMPA at both annual and monthly scales; (2) IMERG had few anomalies while TMPA displayed significant numbers of outliers in central and western parts of the TP; (3) random forest was a promising algorithm in acquiring high resolution precipitation data with improved accuracy; (4) the downscaled results based on IMERG had better performances than those based on TMPA.


2010 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 310-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jianxin Wang ◽  
David B. Wolff

Abstract Ground-validation (GV) radar-rain products are often utilized for validation of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) space-based rain estimates, and, hence, quantitative evaluation of the GV radar-rain product error characteristics is vital. This study uses quality-controlled gauge data to compare with TRMM GV radar rain rates in an effort to provide such error characteristics. The results show that significant differences of concurrent radar–gauge rain rates exist at various time scales ranging from 5 min to 1 day, despite lower overall long-term bias. However, the differences between the radar area-averaged rain rates and gauge point rain rates cannot be explained as due to radar error only. The error variance separation method is adapted to partition the variance of radar–gauge differences into the gauge area–point error variance and radar-rain estimation error variance. The results provide relatively reliable quantitative uncertainty evaluation of TRMM GV radar-rain estimates at various time scales and are helpful to understand better the differences between measured radar and gauge rain rates. It is envisaged that this study will contribute to better utilization of GV radar-rain products to validate versatile space-based rain estimates from TRMM, as well as the proposed Global Precipitation Measurement satellite and other satellites.


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco J. Tapiador ◽  
Andrés Navarro ◽  
Eduardo García-Ortega ◽  
Andrés Merino ◽  
José Luis Sánchez ◽  
...  

AbstractAfter 5 years in orbit, the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission has produced enough quality-controlled data to allow the first validation of their precipitation estimates over Spain. High-quality gauge data from the meteorological network of the Spanish Meteorological Agency (AEMET) are used here to validate Integrated Multisatellite Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) level 3 estimates of surface precipitation. While aggregated values compare notably well, some differences are found in specific locations. The research investigates the sources of these discrepancies, which are found to be primarily related to the underestimation of orographic precipitation in the IMERG satellite products, as well as to the number of available gauges in the GPCC gauges used for calibrating IMERG. It is shown that IMERG provides suboptimal performance in poorly instrumented areas but that the estimate improves greatly when at least one rain gauge is available for the calibration process. A main, generally applicable conclusion from this research is that the IMERG satellite-derived estimates of precipitation are more useful (r2 > 0.80) for hydrology than interpolated fields of rain gauge measurements when at least one gauge is available for calibrating the satellite product. If no rain gauges were used, the results are still useful but with decreased mean performance (r2 ≈ 0.65). Such figures, however, are greatly improved if no coastal areas are included in the comparison. Removing them is a minor issue in terms of hydrologic impacts, as most rivers in Spain have their sources far from the coast.


Author(s):  
Luiz Octavio Fabricio dos Santos ◽  
Carlos Alexandre Santos Querino ◽  
Juliane Kayse Albuquerque da Silva Querino ◽  
Altemar Lopes Pedreira Junior ◽  
Aryanne Resende de Melo Moura ◽  
...  

Rainfall is a meteorological variable of great importance for hydric balance and for weather studies. Rainfall estimation, carried out by satellites, has increased the climatological dataset related to precipitation. However, the accuracy of these data is questionable. This paper aimed to validate the estimates done by the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) satellite for the mesoregion of Southern Amazonas State, Brazil. The surface data were collected by the National Water Agency – ANA and National Institute of Meteorology – INMET, and is available at both institutions’ websites. The satellite precipitation data were accessed directly from the NASA webpage. Statistical analysis of Pearson correlation was used, as well as the Willmott’s “d” index and errors from the MAE (Mean Absolute Error) and RMSE (Root Mean Square Error). The GPM satellite satisfactorily estimated the precipitation, once it had correlations above 73% and high Willmott coefficients (between 0.86 and 0.97). The MAE and RMSE showed values that varied from 36.50 mm to 72.49 mm and 13.81 mm to 71.76 mm, respectively. Seasonal rain variations are represented accordingly. In some cases, either an underestimation or an overestimation of the rain data was observed. In the yearly totals, a high rate of similarity between the estimated and measured values was observed. We concluded that the GPM-based multi-satellite precipitation estimates can be used, even though they are not 100% reliable. However, adjustments in calibration for the region are necessary and recommended.


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