Hydro Statistical Assessment of TRMM and GPM Precipitation Products against Ground Precipitation over a Mediterranean Mountainous Watershed (in the Moroccan High Atlas)

Abstract

The tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission TRMM 3B42 V7 product and its successor, the Global Precipitation Measurement Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM IMERG high-resolution product GPM IMERG V5, have been validated against rain gauges precipitation in an arid mountainous basin where ground-based observations of precipitation are sparse, or spatially undistributed. This paper aims to evaluate hydro-statically the performances of the TRMM 3B42 V7 and GPM IMERG V05 satellite precipitations products SPPs, at multiple temporal scales, from 2014 to 2017. SPPs are compared with the gauge station and show good results for both statistical and contingency metrics with notable values R > 0.94. Moreover, the rainfall-runoff events implemented on the hydrological model were performed at 3-hourly time steps and showed satisfactory results based on the obtained Nash–Sutcliffe criteria ranging from 94.50% to 57.50%, and from 89.3% to 51.2%, respectively. The TRMM product tends to underestimate and not capture extreme precipitation events. In contrast, the GPM product can identify the variability of precipitation at small time steps, although a slight underestimation in the detection of extreme events can be corrected during the validation steps. The proposed method is an interesting approach for solving the problem of insufficient observed data in the Mediterranean regions.

Validation of TRMM and GPM Satellite Data Using Daily Precipitation Observations

“…In contrast, the 3B42RT overestimated both summer and winter precipitation. Regarding precipitation detection performance, TMPA products are more accurate in correctly identifying daily precipitation events, whereas IMERG products have fewer false detections [21], [30].…”

Assessment of GPM Satellite Precipitation Performance after Bias Correction, for Hydrological Modeling in a Semi-Arid Watershed (High Atlas Mountain, Morocco)

“…Furthermore, the lack of suitable rainfall measurement stations is an extremely critical challenge, particularly in Mediterranean regions marked by a hilly and steep slope, sparse, inconsistent, and often accompanied by low-measurement-quality data [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14], where rain gauges (RG) data are generally used as a reference. Indeed, the network density in Mediterranean Africa has declined significantly over years [15,16].…”