Long‐term trends in equatorial African rainfall have proven difficult to determine because of a dearth in ground‐measured rainfall data. Multiple, satellite‐based products now provide daily rainfall estimates from 1983 to the present at relatively fine spatial resolutions, but in order to assess trends in rainfall, they must be validated alongside ground‐based measurements. The purpose of this paper is twofold: (a) to assess the accuracy of four rainfall products covering the past several decades in western Uganda; and (b) to ascertain recent, multi‐decadal trends in annual rainfall for the region. The four products are African Rainfall Climatology Version 2 (ARC2), Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Stations (CHIRPS), Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information using Artificial Neural Networks–Climate Data Record (PERSIANN‐CDR), and TAMSAT African Rainfall Climatology And Timeseries (TARCAT). The bias and accuracy of 10‐day, monthly, and seasonal rainfall totals of the four products were assessed using approximately 10 years of data from 10 rain gauges. The homogeneity of the products over multiple time periods was assessed using change‐point analysis. The accuracy of the four products increased with an increase in temporal scale, and CHIRPS was the only product that could be considered sufficiently accurate at estimating seasonal rainfall totals throughout most of the region. TARCAT tended to underestimate totals, and ARC2 and PERSIANN were in general the least accurate products. Only annual rainfall estimates from CHIRPS and TARCAT were significantly correlated with ground‐measured rainfall totals. TARCAT was the most homogeneous product, while ARC2, CHIRPS, and PERSIANN had significant negative change points that caused a drying bias over the 1983–2016 period. After adjusting the satellite‐based rainfall estimates based on the timing and magnitude of the change points, annual rainfall totals derived from all four products indicated that western Uganda experienced significantly increasing rainfall from 1983 to 2016.
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PERSIANN Dynamic Infrared–Rain Rate (PDIR-Now): A Near-Real-Time, Quasi-Global Satellite Precipitation Dataset
Abstract This study presents the Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information Using Artificial Neural Networks–Dynamic Infrared Rain Rate (PDIR-Now) near-real-time precipitation dataset. This dataset provides hourly, quasi-global, infrared-based precipitation estimates at 0.04° × 0.04° spatial resolution with a short latency (15–60 min). It is intended to supersede the PERSIANN–Cloud Classification System (PERSIANN-CCS) dataset previously produced as the near-real-time product of the PERSIANN family. We first provide a brief description of the algorithm’s fundamentals and the input data used for deriving precipitation estimates. Second, we provide an extensive evaluation of the PDIR-Now dataset over annual, monthly, daily, and subdaily scales. Last, the article presents information on the dissemination of the dataset through the Center for Hydrometeorology and Remote Sensing (CHRS) web-based interfaces. The evaluation, conducted over the period 2017–18, demonstrates the utility of PDIR-Now and its improvement over PERSIANN-CCS at all temporal scales. Specifically, PDIR-Now improves the estimation of rain/no-rain days as demonstrated by a critical success index (CSI) of 0.53 compared to 0.47 of PERSIANN-CCS. In addition, PDIR-Now improves the estimation of seasonal and diurnal cycles of precipitation as well as regional precipitation patterns erroneously estimated by PERSIANN-CCS. Finally, an evaluation is carried out to examine the performance of PDIR-Now in capturing two extreme events, Hurricane Harvey and a cluster of summer thunderstorms that occurred over the Netherlands, where it is shown that PDIR-Now adequately represents spatial precipitation patterns as well as subdaily precipitation rates with a correlation coefficient (CORR) of 0.64 for Hurricane Harvey and 0.76 for the Netherlands thunderstorms.
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- PAR ID:
- 10225971
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Hydrometeorology
- Volume:
- 21
- Issue:
- 12
- ISSN:
- 1525-755X
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 2893 to 2906
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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