Satellite-based products increasingly take an important role in filling data gaps in data sparse regions around the
world. In recent years, precipitation products that utilize multi-satellite and multi-sensor datasets have been gaining
more popularity than products from a single sensor or satellite. Adjusted with gauge and ground radar data, satellitebased
products have been significantly improved. However the history of satellite-based precipitation products is
relatively short compared to the length of 30 years in the definition for climatology from the World Meteorological
Organization (WMO). For example, the NASA/JAXA Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) has been in
operation for over 16 years since 1997. The length of TRMM is far shorter than those from ground observations,
raising a question whether TRMM climatology products are good enough for research and applications. In this
study, three climatologies derived from ground observations (Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC) and
Willmott and Matsuura (WM)) and a blended product (the TRMM Multi-Satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA)
monthly product or 3B43) are compared on a global scale to assess the performance and weaknesses of the TMPAderived
climatology. Results show that the 3B43 climatology matches well with the two gauge-based climatologies
in all seasons in terms of spatial distribution, zonal means as well as seasonal variations. However, high variations in
rain rates are found in light rain regions such as the Sahara Desert. Large negative biases (3B43<WM<GPCC) are
found in some high rain rate regions, which is not well understood. Further investigations are needed.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.