Evaluating the Applicability of Four Latest Satellite–Gauge Combined Precipitation Estimates for Extreme Precipitation and Streamflow Predictions over the Upper Yellow River Basins in China

Abstract

Abstract:This study aimed to statistically and hydrologically assess the performance of the four latest and widely used satellite-gauge combined precipitation estimates (SGPEs), namely CRT (CMORPH CRT), BLD (CMORPH BLD), CDR (PERSIANN CDR), 3B42 (TMPA 3B42 version 7) over the upper yellow river basins (UYRB) in china during 2001-2012 time period. The performances of the SGPEs were compared with the Chinese Meteorological Administration (CMA) datasets using the hydrologic model called Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) which is known as a land surface hydrologic model. Results indicated that irrespective of the slight underestimation in the western mountains and overestimation in the southeast, the four SGPEs could generally captured the spatial distribution of precipitation well. Although 3B42 exhibited a better performance in capturing the spatial distribution of daily average precipitation, BLD agreed best with CMA in the time series of watershed average precipitation, which resulted in BLD having a comparable performance to the CMA in the long-term hydrological simulations. Moreover, the potential for disastrous heavy rain mainly occurs in southeastern corner of the basin, and CRT and BLD comparisons showed to be closer to the CMA in the distribution of extreme precipitation events while 3B42 and CDR overestimated the extreme precipitation especially over the southeast of UYRB region. Therefore, CRT and BLD were able to match the high peak discharges very well for the wet seasons, while 3B42 and CDR overrated the high peak discharges. In addition, the four SGPEs performed well for the 2005 flood event but exhibited poorly when tested for the 2012 flood event. Results indicate that the application of the four SGPEs should be used with caution in simulating massive flood events over UYRB region.

The Assessment and Comparison of TMPA and IMERG Products Over the Major Basins of Mainland China

“…Many studies used the SPEs in their works on water balance analyses, water resource management, hydrological simulation, and disaster forecasting (W Yang et al, 2016). However, basin-scale assessments of SPEs is the process necessary for their widely operational applications, as the inherent biases and indeterminate errors of them can be propagated or even amplified through the applied integration processes and thus result in poor results (J Su et al, 2017;J Su et al, 2019). Figure 10 is the summary of evaluation metrics for the daily basin mean precipitation time series sampled from the five SPEs against gauge observations-with associated monthly basin mean precipitation time series in Figure 11.…”

“…However, uneven distribution, insufficient density, limited spatial coverage hamper the wide application of these ground-based precipitation observations (GPOs), especially in the basins with complex topography (Anjum et al, 2018;Li et al, 2017). In recent years, the rapid development of satellite observations and retrieval techniques has prompted the continuous improvement of satellitebased precipitation estimations (SPEs), providing new opportunities for regional, national, and global scale applications [Kim et al, 2018;J Su et al, 2017;Wu et al, 2012] to overcome the limitation of GPOs.…”

“…Since the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), operated by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), was launched in 1997 as the first dedicated meteorological precipitation satellite, several diverse quasi-global SPEs have been released publicly through different techniques, such as the TRMM Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA) [George J Huffman et al, 2007], Climate Prediction Center (CPC) MORPHing technique (CMORPH) (Joyce et al, 2004), Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information using Artificial Neural Networks (PERSIANN) (Sorooshian et al, 2000), and Global Satellite Mapping of Precipitation (GSMaP) (Ushio et al, 2009). Among them, the TMPA products, especially the latest Version 7 (V7), are regarded as the most reliable and extensively used products in the TRMM era over most parts of world (Dinku et al, 2008;Gao et al, 2017;Qin et al, 2014;F Su et al, 2008;J Su et al, 2017;H Yang et al, 2007;Yong et al, 2015). Over Mainland China, Yong et al (2016) focused on evaluating both near-realtime and post-real-time TMPA by an improved error-component analysis procedure and suggested that the error components in TMPA exhibited rather strong regional and seasonal differences over diverse climate regimes.…”

Comprehensive Evaluation of GPM-IMERG, CMORPH, and TMPA Precipitation Products with Gauged Rainfall over Mainland China

“…Precipitation is a crucial component of the Earth's water and energy cycles. Reliable and accurate precipitation information plays an important role in hydrology, climatology, and water resource management [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. Rain gauge networks may provide relatively accurate precipitation measurements but with an uneven distribution of stations and limited spatial representativeness [12].…”

Evaluations and Improvements of GLDAS2.0 and GLDAS2.1 Forcing Data's Applicability for Basin Scale Hydrological Simulations in the Tibetan Plateau

“…This result seems to support our results, but their study area is much smaller. Similarly, Su et al () also indicated CMORPH‐BLD has better performance than CMORPH real time product, PERSIANN‐CDR, and TRMM3B42 V7. Nevertheless, their study was carried out only for the Upper Yellow River basin.…”