Bias adjustment of satellite precipitation estimation using ground-based measurement: A case study evaluation over the southwestern United States

Reliable precipitation measurement is a crucial component in hydrologic studies. Although satellite-based observation is able to provide spatial and temporal distribution of precipitation, the measurements tend to show systematic bias. This paper introduces a grid-based precipitation merging procedure in which satellite estimates from the Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information using Artificial Neural Networks-Cloud Classification System (PERSIANN-CCS) are adjusted based on the Climate Prediction Center (CPC) daily rain gauge analysis. To remove the bias, the hourly CCS estimates were spatially and temporally accumulated to the daily 1°×1° scale, the resolution of CPC rain gauge analysis. The daily CCS bias was then downscaled to the hourly temporal scale to correct hourly CCS estimates. The bias corrected CCS estimates are called the adjusted CCS (CCSA) product. With the adjustment from the gauge measurement, CCSA data have been generated to provide more reliable high temporal/spatial-resolution precipitation estimates. In the case study, the CCSA precipitation estimates from the proposed approach are compared against ground-based measurements in high-density gauge networks located in the southwestern United States. © 2009 American Meteorological Society

GLEAM v3 : satellite-based land evaporation and root-zone soil moisture

The Global Land Evaporation Amsterdam Model (GLEAM) is a set of algorithms dedicated to the estimation of terrestrial evaporation and root-zone soil moisture from satellite data. Ever since its development in 2011, the model has been regularly revised, aiming at the optimal incorporation of new satellite-observed geophysical variables, and improving the representation of physical processes. In this study, the next version of this model (v3) is presented. Key changes relative to the previous version include (1) a revised formulation of the evaporative stress, (2) an optimized drainage algorithm, and (3) a new soil moisture data assimilation system. GLEAM v3 is used to produce three new data sets of terrestrial evaporation and root-zone soil moisture, including a 36-year data set spanning 1980-2015, referred to as v3a (based on satellite-observed soil moisture, vegetation optical depth and snow-water equivalent, reanalysis air temperature and radiation, and a multi-source precipitation product), and two satellite-based data sets. The latter share most of their forcing, except for the vegetation optical depth and soil moisture, which are based on observations from different passive and active C-and L-band microwave sensors (European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative, ESA CCI) for the v3b data set (spanning 2003-2015) and observations from the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite in the v3c data set (spanning 2011-2015). Here, these three data sets are described in detail, compared against analogous data sets generated using the previous version of GLEAM (v2), and validated against measurements from 91 eddy-covariance towers and 2325 soil moisture sensors across a broad range of ecosystems. Results indicate that the quality of the v3 soil moisture is consistently better than the one from v2: average correlations against in situ surface soil moisture measurements increase from 0.61 to 0.64 in the case of the v3a data set and the representation of soil moisture in the second layer improves as well, with correlations increasing from 0.47 to 0.53. Similar improvements are observed for the v3b and c data sets. Despite regional differences, the quality of the evaporation fluxes remains overall similar to the one obtained using the previous version of GLEAM, with average correlations against eddy-covariance measurements ranging between 0.78 and 0.81 for the different data sets. These global data sets of terrestrial evaporation and root-zone soil moisture are now openly available at www.GLEAM.eu and may be used for large-scale hydrological applications, climate studies, or research on land-atmosphere feedbacks

Comprehensive evaluation of high-resolution satellite-based precipitation products over China

Characterizing the errors in satellite-based precipitation estimation products is crucial for understanding their effects in hydrological applications. Six precipitation products derived from three algorithms are comprehensively evaluated against gauge data over mainland China from December 2006 to November 2010. These products include three satellite-only estimates: the Global Satellite Mapping of Precipitation Microwave-IR Combined Product (GSMaP_MVK), the Climate Prediction Center (CPC) MORPHing (CMORPH), and Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information using Artificial Neural Networks (PERSIANN), as well as their gauge-corrected counterparts: the GSMaP Gauge-calibrated Product (GSMaP_Gauge), bias-corrected CMORPH (CMORPH_CRT), and PERSIANN Climate Data Record (PERSIANN-CDR). Overall, the bias-correction procedures largely reduce various errors for the three groups of satellite-based precipitation products. GSMaP_Gauge produces better fractional coverage with the highest correlation (0.95) and the lowest RMSE (0.53 mm/day) but also high RB (15.77%). In general, CMORPH_CRT amounts are closer to the gauge reference. CMORPH shows better performance than GSMaP_MVK and PERSIANN with the highest CC (0.82) and the lowest RMSE (0.93 mm/day), but also presents a relatively high RB (-19.60%). In winter, all six satellite precipitation estimates have comparatively poor capability, with the IR-based PERSIANN_CDR exhibiting the closest performance to the gauge reference. Both satellite-only and gauge-corrected satellite products show poor capability in detecting occurrence of precipitation with a low POD (40%)

Improving satellite measurements of clouds and precipitation using machine learning

Observing and measuring clouds and precipitation is essential for climate science, meteorology, and an increasing range of societal and economic activities. This importance is due to the role of clouds and precipitation in the hydrological cycle and the weather and climate of the Earth. Furthermore, patterns of cloudiness and precipitation interact across continental scales and are highly variable in both space and time. Therefore their study and monitoring require observations with global coverage and high temporal resolution, which currently can only be provided by satellite observations.Inferring properties of clouds or precipitation from satellite observations is a non-trivial task. Due to the limited information content of the observations and the complex physics of the atmosphere, such retrievals are endowed with significant uncertainties. Traditional methods to perform these retrievals trade-off processing speed against accuracy and the ability to characterize the uncertainties in their predictions.This thesis develops and evaluates two neural-network-based methods for performing retrievals of hydrometeors, i.e., clouds and precipitation, that are capable of providing accurate predictions of the retrieval uncertainty. The practicality and benefits of the proposed methods are demonstrated using three real-world retrieval applications of cloud properties and precipitation. The demonstrated benefits of these methods over traditional retrieval methods led to the adoption of one of the algorithms for operational use at the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites. The two other algorithms are planned to be integrated into the operational processing at the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research, as well as the processing of observations from the Global Precipitation Measurement, a joint satellite mission by NASA and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency.The principal advantage of the proposed methods is their simplicity and computational efficiency. A minor modification of the architecture and training of conventional neural networks is sufficient to capture the dominant source of uncertainty for remote sensing retrievals. As shown in this thesis, deep neural networks can significantly improve the accuracy of satellite retrievals of hydrometeors. With the proposed methods, the benefits of modern neural network architectures can be combined with reliable uncertainty estimates, which are required to improve the characterization of the observed hydrometeors

Inter-comparison of high-resolution satellite precipitation products over Central Asia

This paper examines the spatial error structures of eight precipitation estimates derived from four different satellite retrieval algorithms including TRMM Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA), Climate Prediction Center morphing technique (CMORPH), Global Satellite Mapping of Precipitation (GSMaP) and Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information using Artificial Neural Networks (PERSIANN). All the original satellite and bias-corrected products of each algorithm (3B42RTV7 and 3B42V7, CMORPH_RAW and CMORPH_CRT, GSMaP_MVK and GSMaP_Gauge, PERSIANN_RAW and PERSIANN_CDR) are evaluated against ground-based Asian Precipitation-Highly Resolved Observational Data Integration Towards Evaluation of Water Resources (APHRODITE) over Central Asia for the period of 2004 to 2006. The analyses show that all products except PERSIANN exhibit overestimation over Aral Sea and its surrounding areas. The bias-correction improves the quality of the original satellite TMPA products and GSMaP significantly but slightly in CMORPH and PERSIANN over Central Asia. 3B42RTV7 overestimates precipitation significantly with large Relative Bias (RB) (128.17%) while GSMaP_Gauge shows consistent high correlation coefficient (CC) (>0.8) but RB fluctuates between -57.95% and 112.63%. The PERSIANN_CDR outperforms other products in winter with the highest CC (0.67). Both the satellite-only and gauge adjusted products have particularly poor performance in detecting rainfall events in terms of lower POD (less than 65%), CSI (less than 45%) and relatively high FAR (more than 35%)

Variational Assimilation of Global Microwave Rainfall Retrievals: Physical and Dynamical Impact on GEOS Analyses and Forecasts

Global microwave rainfall retrievals from a 5-satellite constellation, including TMI from TRMM, SSWI from DMSP F13, F14 and F15, and AMSR-E from EOS-AQUA, are assimilated into the NASA Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) Data Assimilation System (DAS) using a 1-D variational continuous assimilation (VCA) algorithm. The physical and dynamical impact of rainfall assimilation on GEOS analyses and forecasts is examined at various temporal and spatial scales. This study demonstrates that the 1-D VCA algorithm, which was originally developed and evaluated for rainfall assimilations over tropical oceans, can effectively assimilate satellite microwave rainfall retrievals and improve GEOS analyses over both the Tropics and the extratropics where the atmospheric processes are dominated by different large-scale dynamics and moist physics, and also over the land, where rainfall estimates from passive microwave radiometers are believed to be less accurate. Results show that rainfall assimilation renders the GEOS analysis physically and dynamically more consistent with the observed precipitation at the monthly-mean and 6-hour time scales. Over regions where the model precipitation tends to misbehave in distinctly different rainy regimes, the 1-D VCA algorithm, by compensating for errors in the model s moist time-tendency in a 6-h analysis window, is able to bring the rainfall analysis closer to the observed. The radiation and cloud fields also tend to be in better agreement with independent satellite observations in the rainfall-assimilation m especially over regions where rainfall analyses indicate large improvements. Assimilation experiments with and without rainfall data for a midlatitude frontal system clearly indicates that the GEOS analysis is improved through changes in the thermodynamic and dynamic fields that respond to the rainfall assimilation. The synoptic structures of temperature, moisture, winds, divergence, and vertical motion, as well as vorticity are more realistically captured across the front. Short-term forecasts using initial conditions assimilated with rainfall data also show slight improvements.

The Hamburg Ocean-Atmosphere Parameters and Fluxes from Satellite Data (HOAPS): Climatological Atlas of Satellite-Derived Air-Sea Interaction Parameters over the World Oceans

The present atlas is based on the newly available data set known as the Hamburg Ocean At- mosphere Parameters and Fluxes from Satellite Data (HOAPS), for the global oceans. It pre- sents the basic fields of air-sea interaction parameters such as sea surface temperature, specific humidity at air and sea surface temperature, difference in humidity, Dalton number, wind speed and the air sea fluxes such as latent heat, sensible heat and longwave radiation. The atlas also provides the hydrological cycle parameters over the global oceans such as evaporation, precipitation and freshwater flux. The data set covers the period July 1987 to December 1998 and provides the mean monthly, seasonal and annual fields of different variables. It is intended to provide a climatological data base for scientists and students in the field of climatology, me- teorology, oceanography, and air-sea interaction. The document describes the various satellite sensors used and details the method by which the fluxes are derived from those satellite data. This printed atlas is accompanied by a CD-ROM containing the data of all individual monthly averages of the considered parameters as well as the figures and this text. Fields with higher temporal and spatial resolution are also freely available to interested users for non-commercial scientific research. For details of how to access the Fields see: http:// www.mpimet.mpg.de/Depts/Physik/HOAPS

MSWEP : 3-hourly 0.25° global gridded precipitation (1979-2015) by merging gauge, satellite, and reanalysis data

Current global precipitation (P) datasets do not take full advantage of the complementary nature of satellite and reanalysis data. Here, we present Multi-Source Weighted-Ensemble Precipitation (MSWEP) version 1.1, a global P dataset for the period 1979-2015 with a 3hourly temporal and 0.25 degrees ffi spatial resolution, specifically designed for hydrological modeling. The design philosophy of MSWEP was to optimally merge the highest quality P data sources available as a function of timescale and location. The long-term mean of MSWEP was based on the CHPclim dataset but replaced with more accurate regional datasets where available. A correction for gauge under-catch and orographic effects was introduced by inferring catchment-average P from streamflow (Q) observations at 13 762 stations across the globe. The temporal variability of MSWEP was determined by weighted averaging of P anomalies from seven datasets; two based solely on interpolation of gauge observations (CPC Unified and GPCC), three on satellite remote sensing (CMORPH, GSMaP-MVK, and TMPA 3B42RT), and two on atmospheric model reanalysis (ERA-Interim and JRA-55). For each grid cell, the weight assigned to the gauge-based estimates was calculated from the gauge network density, while the weights assigned to the satellite-and reanalysis-based estimates were calculated from their comparative performance at the surrounding gauges. The quality of MSWEP was compared against four state-of-the-art gauge-adjusted P datasets (WFDEI-CRU, GPCP-1DD, TMPA 3B42, and CPC Unified) using independent P data from 125 FLUXNET tower stations around the globe. MSWEP obtained the highest daily correlation coefficient (R) among the five P datasets for 60.0% of the stations and a median R of 0.67 vs. 0.44-0.59 for the other datasets. We further evaluated the performance of MSWEP using hydrological modeling for 9011 catchments (< 50 000 km(2)) across the globe. Specifically, we calibrated the simple conceptual hydrological model HBV (Hydrologiska Byrans Vattenbalansavdelning) against daily Q observations with P from each of the different datasets. For the 1058 sparsely gauged catchments, representative of 83.9% of the global land surface (excluding Antarctica), MSWEP obtained a median calibration NSE of 0.52 vs. 0.29-0.39 for the other P datasets. MSWEP is available via http://www.gloh2o.org