A Downscaling–Merging Scheme for Monthly Precipitation Estimation with High Resolution Based on CBAM-ConvLSTM

Abstract

Satellite products have mediocre performance in precipitation estimation, while rain gauges are incapable of describing continuous spatial precipitation distributions. To obtain spatially continuous and accurate precipitation data, this paper proposes a two-step scheme incorporating environmental variables, satellite precipitation estimations, and rain gauge observations for the calibration of satellite precipitation data. First, the GPM data are downscaled from 0.1° to 0.01° based on the seasonal RF models to minimize the spatial differences between the satellite estimations and the rain gauge observations. Secondly, the fusion model combining ConvLSTM and CBAM explores the spatiotemporal correlation of downscaled satellite precipitation data with environmental co-variables and ground-based observations to correct GPM precipitation. The integrated scheme (CBAM-ConvLSTM) is applied to acquire monthly precipitation at a spatial resolution of 0.01° over Hanjiang River Basin from 2014 to 2018. Comparative analyses of model-based satellite products with in situ observations show that model-based precipitation products have a high-resolution spatial distribution along with high accuracy, which combines the advantages of in situ observations and satellite products. Compared to the original GPM product, the evaluation metric values of the merged precipitation products all improved: the RMSE decreased by 31% while the CC increased from 0.55 to 0.69, the bias decreased from about 25% to less than 1.8%, and the MAE decreased by 27.8% while the KGE increased from 0.28 to 0.52. This two-step scheme provides an effective way to derive a high-resolution and accurate monthly precipitation product for humid regions.