Spatial Interpolation and Assimilation Methods for Satellite and Ground Meteorological Data in Vietnam

This paper presents the applications of spatial interpolation and assimilation methods for satellite and ground meteorological data, including temperature, relative humidity, and precipitation in regions of Vietnam. In this work, Universal Kriging is used for spatially interpolating ground data and its interpolated results are assimilated with corresponding satellite data to anticipate better gridded data. The input meteorological data was collected from 98 ground weather stations located all over Vietnam; whereas, the satellite data consists of the MODIS Atmospheric Profiles product (MOD07), the ASTER Global Digital Elevation Map (ASTER DEM), and the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) in six years. The outputs are gridded fields of temperature, relative humidity, and precipitation. The empirical results were evaluated by using the Root mean square error (RMSE) and the mean percent error (MPE), which illustrate that Universal Kriging interpolation obtains higher accuracy than other forms of Kriging; whereas, the assimilation for precipitation gradually reduces RMSE and significantly MPE. It also reveals that the accuracy of temperature and humidity when employing assimilation that is not significantly improved because of low MODIS retrieval due to cloud contamination.