scholarly journals Assessment of GPM IMERG Satellite Precipitation Estimation under Complex Climatic and Topographic Conditions

Atmosphere ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 780
Author(s):  
Chengxuan Lu ◽  
Jian Ye ◽  
Guohua Fang ◽  
Xianfeng Huang ◽  
Min Yan

Satellite precipitation estimation provides crucial information for those places lacking rainfall observations from ground–based sensors, especially in terrestrial or marine areas with complex climatic or topographic conditions. This is the case over much of Western China, including Upper and Middle Lancang River Basin (UMLRB), an extremely important transnational river system in Asia (the Lancang–Mekong River Basin) with complex climate and topography that has limited long–term precipitation records and high–elevation data, and no operational weather radars. In this study, we evaluated three GPM IMERG satellite precipitation estimation (IMERG E, IMERG L and IMERG F) over UMLRB in terms of multi–year average precipitation distribution, amplitude consistency, occurrence consistency, and elevation–dependence in both dry and wet seasons. Results demonstrated that monsoon and solid precipitation mainly affected amplitude consistency of precipitation, aerosol affected occurrence consistency of precipitation, and topography and wind–induced errors affected elevation dependence. The amplitude and occurrence consistency of precipitation were best in wet seasons in the Climate Transition Zone and worst in dry seasons in the same zone. Regardless of the elevation–dependence of amplitude or occurrence in dry and wet seasons, the dry season in the Alpine Canyon Area was most positively dependent and most significant. More significant elevation–dependence was correlated with worse IMERG performance. The Local Weighted Regression (LOWERG) model showed a nonlinear relationship between precipitation and elevation in both seasons. The amplitude consistency and occurrence consistency of both seasons worsened with increasing precipitation intensity and was worst for extreme precipitation cases. IMERG F had great potential for application to hydroclimatic research and water resources assessment in the study area. Further research should assess how the dependence of IMERG’s spatial performance on climate and topography could guide improvements in global precipitation assessment algorithms and the study of mountain landslides, floods, and other natural disasters during the monsoon period.

2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 485-492 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nan-Ching Yeh ◽  
Yao-Chung Chuang ◽  
Hsin-Shuo Peng ◽  
Kuo-Lin Hsu

AbstractThe Global Satellite Mapping of Precipitation (GSMaP) was used to estimate the accumulated rainfall in May from the Mei-Yu front in Taiwan. Rainfall estimation from GSMaP during 2002–2017 were evaluated using more than 400 local gauge observations, collected from the Taiwan Central Weather Bureau (CWB). Studies have demonstrated that the GSMaP rainfall estimation estimates can be biased, depending on the target region, elevation, and season. In this experiment, we have evaluated GSMaP over three elevation ranges. The GSMaP systemic errors for each elevation range were identified and corrected using regression analysis. The results indicated that GSMaP estimation can be improved significantly through adjustment over three elevation ranges (elevation less than 50 m, elevation of 50–100 m, and elevation higher than 100 m). For these three elevation ranges, the correlation coefficient between the GSMaP estimations and CWB rainfall data was 0.76, 0.78, and 0.59, respectively. This indicated that the GSMaP estimation was more accurate for low-elevation regions than high-elevation regions. After the proposed approaches were employed to correct the errors, the bias errors were respectively improved by 5.64(13.7%), 7.33(38.4%) and 10.52(31.2%) mm for low-, mid- and high-elevation regions. This study demonstrated that the local correction approaches can be used to improve GSMaP estimation of Mei-Yu rainfall in Taiwan.


2010 ◽  
Vol 49 (5) ◽  
pp. 1044-1051 ◽  
Author(s):  
Feyera A. Hirpa ◽  
Mekonnen Gebremichael ◽  
Thomas Hopson

Abstract This study focuses on the evaluation of 3-hourly, 0.25° × 0.25°, satellite-based precipitation products: the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Multisatellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA) 3B42RT, the NOAA/Climate Prediction Center morphing technique (CMORPH), and Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information using Artificial Neural Networks (PERSIANN). CMORPH is primarily microwave based, 3B42RT is primarily microwave based when microwave data are available and infrared based when microwave data are not available, and PERSIANN is primarily infrared based. The results show that 1) 3B42RT and CMORPH give similar rainfall fields (in terms of bias, spatial structure, elevation-dependent trend, and distribution function), which are different from PERSIANN rainfall fields; 2) PERSIANN does not show the elevation-dependent trend observed in rain gauge values, 3B42RT, and CMORPH; and 3) PERSIANN considerably underestimates rainfall in high-elevation areas.


Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 265
Author(s):  
Akarath Soukhaphon ◽  
Ian G. Baird ◽  
Zeb S. Hogan

The Mekong River, well known for its aquatic biodiversity, is important to the social, physical, and economic health of millions living in China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. This paper explores the social and environmental impacts of several Mekong basin hydropower dams and groupings of dams and the geographies of their impacts. Specifically, we examined the 3S (Sesan, Sekong Srepok) river system in northeastern Cambodia, the Central Highlands of Vietnam, and southern Laos; the Khone Falls area in southern Laos; the lower Mun River Basin in northeastern Thailand; and the upper Mekong River in Yunnan Province, China, northeastern Myanmar, northern Laos, and northern Thailand. Evidence shows that these dams and groupings of dams are affecting fish migrations, river hydrology, and sediment transfers. Such changes are negatively impacting riparian communities up to 1000 km away. Because many communities depend on the river and its resources for their food and livelihood, changes to the river have impacted, and will continue to negatively impact, food and economic security. While social and environmental impact assessments have been carried out for these projects, greater consideration of the scale and cumulative impacts of dams is necessary.


2014 ◽  
Vol 70 (4) ◽  
pp. 671-677 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaomin Ji ◽  
Youpeng Xu ◽  
Longfei Han ◽  
Liu Yang

Stream structure is usually dominated by various human activities over a short term. An analysis of variation in stream structure from 1979 to 2009 in the Qinhuai River Basin, China, was performed based on remote sensing images and topographic maps by using ArcGIS. A series of river parameters derived from river geomorphology are listed to describe the status of river structure in the past and present. Results showed that urbanization caused a huge increase in the impervious area. The number of rivers in the study area has decreased and length of rivers has shortened. Over the 30 years, there was a 41.03% decrease in river length. Complexity and stability of streams have also changed and consequently the storage capacities of river channels in intensively urbanized areas are much lower than in moderately urbanized areas, indicating a greater risk of floods. Therefore, more attention should be paid to the urban disturbance to rivers.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 312
Author(s):  
Xiongpeng Tang ◽  
Jianyun Zhang ◽  
Guoqing Wang ◽  
Gebdang Biangbalbe Ruben ◽  
Zhenxin Bao ◽  
...  

The demand for accurate long-term precipitation data is increasing, especially in the Lancang-Mekong River Basin (LMRB), where ground-based data are mostly unavailable and inaccessible in a timely manner. Remote sensing and reanalysis quantitative precipitation products provide unprecedented observations to support water-related research, but these products are inevitably subject to errors. In this study, we propose a novel error correction framework that combines products from various institutions. The NASA Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications (AgMERRA), the Asian Precipitation Highly-Resolved Observational Data Integration Towards Evaluation of Water Resources (APHRODITE), the Climate Hazards group InfraRed Precipitation with Stations (CHIRPS), the Multi-Source Weighted-Ensemble Precipitation Version 1.0 (MSWEP), and the Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information using Artificial Neural Networks-Climate Data Records (PERSIANN) were used. Ground-based precipitation data from 1998 to 2007 were used to select precipitation products for correction, and the remaining 1979–1997 and 2008–2014 observe data were used for validation. The resulting precipitation products MSWEP-QM derived from quantile mapping (QM) and MSWEP-LS derived from linear scaling (LS) are evaluated by statistical indicators and hydrological simulation across the LMRB. Results show that the MSWEP-QM and MSWEP-LS can better capture major annual precipitation centers, have excellent simulation results, and reduce the mean BIAS and mean absolute BIAS at most gauges across the LMRB. The two corrected products presented in this study constitute improved climatological precipitation data sources, both time and space, outperforming the five raw gridded precipitation products. Among the two corrected products, in terms of mean BIAS, MSWEP-LS was slightly better than MSWEP-QM at grid-scale, point scale, and regional scale, and it also had better simulation results at all stations except Strung Treng. During the validation period, the average absolute value BIAS of MSWEP-LS and MSWEP-QM decreased by 3.51% and 3.4%, respectively. Therefore, we recommend that MSWEP-LS be used for water-related scientific research in the LMRB.


2015 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 1457-1467 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Tilmant ◽  
G. Marques ◽  
Y. Mohamed

Abstract. Many river basins throughout the world are increasingly under pressure as water demands keep rising due to population growth, industrialization, urbanization and rising living standards. In the past, the typical answer to meet those demands focused on the supply side and involved the construction of hydraulic infrastructures to capture more water from surface water bodies and from aquifers. As river basins have become more and more developed, downstream water users and ecosystems have become increasingly dependent on the management actions taken by upstream users. The increased interconnectedness between water users, aquatic ecosystems and the built environment is further compounded by climate change and its impact on the water cycle. Those pressures mean that it has become increasingly important to measure and account for changes in water fluxes and their corresponding economic value as they progress throughout the river system. Such basin water accounting should provide policy makers with important information regarding the relative contribution of each water user, infrastructure and management decision to the overall economic value of the river basin. This paper presents a dynamic water accounting approach whereby the entire river basin is considered as a value chain with multiple services including production and storage. Water users and reservoir operators are considered as economic agents who can exchange water with their hydraulic neighbors at a price corresponding to the marginal value of water. Effective water accounting is made possible by keeping track of all water fluxes and their corresponding hypothetical transactions using the results of a hydro-economic model. The proposed approach is illustrated with the Eastern Nile River basin in Africa.


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