Open AccessHow Does the Evaluation of the GPM IMERG Rainfall Product Depend on Gauge Density and Rainfall Intensity?
Author(s) -
Fuqiang Tian,
Shiyu Hou,
Long Yang,
Hongchang Hu,
Aizhong Hou
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal of hydrometeorology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.733
H-Index - 123
eISSN - 1525-755X
pISSN - 1525-7541
DOI - 10.1175/jhm-d-17-0161.1
Subject(s) - rain gauge , environmental science , global precipitation measurement , precipitation , meteorology , intensity (physics) , climatology , geography , physics , geology , quantum mechanics
This study investigates the dependency of the evaluation of the Integrated Multisatellite Retrievals for Global Precipitation Measurement (IMERG) rainfall product on the gauge density of a ground-based rain gauge network as well as rainfall intensity over five subregions in mainland China. High-density rain gauges (1.5 gauges per 100 km2) provide exceptional resources for ground validation of satellite rainfall estimates over this region. Eight different gauge networks were derived with contrasting gauge densities ranging from 0.04 to 4 gauges per 100 km2. The evaluation focuses on two warm seasons (April–October) during 2014 and 2015. The results show a strong dependency of the evaluation metrics for the IMERG rainfall product on gauge density and rainfall intensity. A dense rain gauge network tends to provide better evaluation metrics, which implies that previous evaluations of the IMERG rainfall product based on a relatively low-density gauge network might have underestimated its performance. The decreasing trends of probability of detection with gauge density indicate a limited ability to capture light rainfall events in the IMERG rainfall product. However, IMERG tends to overestimate (underestimate) light (heavy) rainfall events, which is a consistent feature that does not show strong dependency on gauge densities. The results provide valuable insights for the improvement of a rainfall retrieval algorithm adopted in the IMERG rainfall product.