scholarly journals Initial Validation of the Global Precipitation Climatology Project Monthly Rainfall over the United States

2000 ◽  
Vol 39 (7) ◽  
pp. 1071-1086 ◽  
Author(s):  
Witold F. Krajewski ◽  
Grzegorz J. Ciach ◽  
Jeffrey R. McCollum ◽  
Ciprian Bacotiu
Author(s):  
Arnold Gruber ◽  
Bruno Rudolf ◽  
Mark M. Morrissey ◽  
Toshiyuki Kurino ◽  
John E. Janowiak ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
George J. Huffman ◽  
Robert F. Adler ◽  
Philip Arkin ◽  
Alfred Chang ◽  
Ralph Ferraro ◽  
...  

2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (11) ◽  
pp. 2134-2141 ◽  
Author(s):  
HELENE ALEXANDERSON ◽  
ANN M. REED ◽  
STEVEN R. YTTERBERG

Objective.To evaluate some measurement properties of the Myositis Activities Profile (MAP) in adult patients with polymyositis (PM) and dermatomyositis (DM) in the United States.Methods.To assess content validity, patients with PM/DM rated difficulty and importance of items of the MAP using a visual analog scale (VAS), range 0–10. For construct validity, consecutive patients with PM/DM performed the 6-item core set for disease activity including the manual muscle test (MMT) and the Health Assessment Questionnaire (HAQ), the Functional Index-2 (FI-2; muscle endurance), and the MAP plus disease effect on well-being on a VAS. Item fit within subscales was analyzed by Cronbach’s alpha. Patients with stable disease activity filled out the MAP again 1 week later.Results.The median combined difficulty and importance, 0–10, of the 31 items was 5.00 (range 2.10–5.95). One item was added, giving a 32-item MAP. Correlations between the median of subscales/single items of the MAP and the HAQ and disease effect on well-being were rs = 0.69 and rs = 0.68, respectively, with lower correlations to the MMT (rs = −0.35), and the FI-2 (rs = −0.29 to −0.47) and disease activity measures (rs = 0.36–0.41). Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for the 4 subscales varied between 0.85 and 0.95. Weighted kappa coefficients (Kw) ranged between 0.77 and 0.93 for the 4 subscales and between 0.74 and 0.83 for the 4 single items without systematic variations (p > 0.05).Conclusion.This initial validation of the MAP indicates promising measurement properties for assessing limitations in activities of daily living and participation in patients with PM/DM in the United States.


2008 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
pp. 1349-1370 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Hatzianastassiou ◽  
B. Katsoulis ◽  
J. Pnevmatikos ◽  
V. Antakis

Abstract In this study, the spatial and temporal distribution of precipitation in the broader Greek area is investigated for the 26-yr period 1979–2004 by using monthly mean satellite-based data, with complete spatial coverage, taken from the Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP). The results show that there exists a clear contrast between the more rainy western Greek area (rainside) and the drier eastern one (rainshadow), whereas there is little precipitation over the islands, particularly in the southern parts. The computed long-term areal mean annual precipitation amount averaged for the study area is equal to P = 639.8 ± 44.8 mm yr−1, showing a decreasing trend of −2.32 mm yr−1 or −60.3 mm over the 26-yr study period, which corresponds to −9.4%. This decrease of precipitation, arising primarily in winter and secondarily in spring, is the result of a decreasing trend from 1979 through the 1980s, against an increase during the 1990s through the early 2000s, followed again by a decrease up to the year 2004. The performed analysis reveals an increasing trend of precipitation in the central and northern parts of the study region, contrary to an identified decreasing trend in the southern parts, which is indicative of threatening desertification processes in those areas in the context of climatic changes in the climatically sensitive Mediterranean basin. In addition, the analysis shows that the precipitation decrease is due to a corresponding decrease of maximum precipitation against rather unchanged minimum precipitation amounts. The analysis indicates that the changing precipitation patterns in the region during winter are significantly anticorrelated with the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index values, against a positive correlation during summer, highlighting thus the role of large-scale circulation patterns for regional climates. The GPCP precipitation data are satisfactorily correlated with instrumental measurements from 36 stations uniformly distributed over the study area (correlation coefficient R = 0.74 for all stations; R = 0.63–0.91 for individual stations).


2012 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert F. Adler ◽  
Guojun Gu ◽  
George J. Huffman

AbstractA procedure is described to estimate bias errors for mean precipitation by using multiple estimates from different algorithms, satellite sources, and merged products. The Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) monthly product is used as a base precipitation estimate, with other input products included when they are within ±50% of the GPCP estimates on a zonal-mean basis (ocean and land separately). The standard deviation σ of the included products is then taken to be the estimated systematic, or bias, error. The results allow one to examine monthly climatologies and the annual climatology, producing maps of estimated bias errors, zonal-mean errors, and estimated errors over large areas such as ocean and land for both the tropics and the globe. For ocean areas, where there is the largest question as to absolute magnitude of precipitation, the analysis shows spatial variations in the estimated bias errors, indicating areas where one should have more or less confidence in the mean precipitation estimates. In the tropics, relative bias error estimates (σ/μ, where μ is the mean precipitation) over the eastern Pacific Ocean are as large as 20%, as compared with 10%–15% in the western Pacific part of the ITCZ. An examination of latitudinal differences over ocean clearly shows an increase in estimated bias error at higher latitudes, reaching up to 50%. Over land, the error estimates also locate regions of potential problems in the tropics and larger cold-season errors at high latitudes that are due to snow. An empirical technique to area average the gridded errors (σ) is described that allows one to make error estimates for arbitrary areas and for the tropics and the globe (land and ocean separately, and combined). Over the tropics this calculation leads to a relative error estimate for tropical land and ocean combined of 7%, which is considered to be an upper bound because of the lack of sign-of-the-error canceling when integrating over different areas with a different number of input products. For the globe the calculated relative error estimate from this study is about 9%, which is also probably a slight overestimate. These tropical and global estimated bias errors provide one estimate of the current state of knowledge of the planet’s mean precipitation.


2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 415-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudinéia Brazil Saldanha ◽  
Bernadete Radin ◽  
Maria Angélica Gonçalves Cardoso ◽  
Matheus Lara Rippel ◽  
Ludmila Losada da Fonseca ◽  
...  

RESUMO Fontes alternativas de dados de precipitação têm se tornado cada vez mais usuais, possibilitando também uma avaliação de áreas com ausência de série longa e/ou continua de dados meteorológicos ou com baixa densidade de estações meteorológicas. O objetivo deste trabalho foi avaliar o desempenho das séries de dados do Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) para o Estado do Rio Grande do Sul e verificar a sua possível utilização na ausência de dados observados de precipitação. Nesse trabalho utilizaram-se séries mensais de precipitação do GPCP fornecidas pela National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) com uma resolução de 0,5° x 0,5° latitude-longitude, para o período de 1979 a 2010. As análises foram realizadas a partir da comparação com dados de precipitação de 22 estações meteorológicas localizadas no estado do Rio Grande do Sul. A partir dos resultados das análises estatísticas, observa-se que o GPCP apresentou um bom desempenho na região de estudo, com o coeficiente de correlação em torno de 0,81. Com isso, infere-se que os dados do GPCP podem ser utilizados como fonte alternativa de dados de precipitação, quando as séries temporais possuem períodos de falhas.


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