Evaluation of the TRMM-3B43 V7 rainfall products on a monthly scale in the Northwest of Iran

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, Urmia University, Urmia, Iran. Department of Geography, payam-e-Noor University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Satellite rainfall estimate systems can produce data for areas for which other sources are
unavailable. Without referring to ground measurements, satellite-based estimates cannot be
used directly before bias correction. This study aims to evaluate the performance of the
TRMM-3B43 V7 rainfall products in the Northwest of Iran. The evaluation was carried out
using monthly data obtained from 21 meteorological stations during 1998–2015. The
monthly and annual spatial distributions of the Pearson correlation coefficient between the
station and satellite-based observations as well as the statistical error measure were
calculated. The results revealed that the correlations between TRMM 3B43 and rain gauge
data were high (R> 0.80) in October and small (R < 0.55) in August. Moreover, mean
annual spatial distribution of R showed that the small values of R occurred in the Northeast
and the southern mountainous regions. We found that the TRMM-3B43 V7 overestimated
rainfall in the Northeast, in September, October and November (>30 mm) and in December
to May (>20 mm). On the contrary, an underestimation was found in the Southwest regions
where summer season (June, July & August) is generally characterized by small anomalies
in terms of R values. Generally, the satellite products applied in this study underestimate
higher rainfall values while showing overestimation for lower rainfall records. The measure
of Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) showed that a large spatial variability takes place in
September, October and November in most of the stations, particularly when rainfall
records is less than 50 mm. Meanwhile, the lowest variability occurred in June, July and
August with a slight increase in the Northeast. Our findings imply that satellite products
have poor performance for estimating higher rainfalls in the Northwest of Iran on a monthly
scale.

Keywords

References

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Environmental Resources Research
Volume 5, Issue 2
July 2017
Pages 153-168

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