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Ronny Berndtsson

Professor, Dep Director, MECW Dep Scientific Coordinator

Profile photo of Ronny Berndtsson

Ground Validation of GPM IMERG Precipitation Products over Iran

Author

  • Fatemeh Maghsood
  • Hossein Hashemi
  • Seyyed Hasan Hosseini
  • Ronny Berndtsson

Summary, in English

Accurate estimation of precipitation is crucial for fundamental input to various hydrometeorological applications. Ground-based precipitation data suffer limitations associated with spatial resolution and coverage; hence, satellite precipitation products can be used to complement traditional rain gauge systems. However, the satellite precipitation data need to be validated before extensive use in the applications. Hence, we conducted a thorough validation of the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Integrated Multi-satellite Retrievals (IMERG) product for all of Iran. The study focused on investigating the performance of daily and monthly GPM IMERG (early, late, final, and monthly) products by comparing them with ground-based precipitation data at synoptic stations throughout the country (2014–2017). The spatial and temporal performance of the GPM IMERG was evaluated using eight statistical criteria considering the rainfall index at the country level. The rainfall detection ability index (POD) showed that the best IMERG product’s performance is for the spring season while the false alarm ratio (FAR) index indicated the inferior performance of the IMERG products for the summer season. The performance of the products generally increased from IMERG-Early to –Final according to the relative bias (rBIAS) results while, based on the quantile-quantile (Q-Q) plots, the IMERG-Final could not be suggested for the applications relying on extreme rainfall estimates compared to IMERG-Early and -Late. The results in this paper improve the understanding of IMERG product’s performance and open a door to future studies regarding hydrometeorological applications of these products in Iran.

Department/s

  • Division of Water Resources Engineering
  • MECW: The Middle East in the Contemporary World
  • Middle Eastern Studies
  • LTH Profile Area: Water
  • Centre for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies (CMES)

Publishing year

2020

Language

English

Publication/Series

Remote Sensing

Volume

12

Issue

1

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

MDPI AG

Topic

  • Human Geography

Keywords

  • GPM IMERG
  • satellite precipitation
  • Iran
  • spatiotemporal analysis
  • statistical distribution
  • validation

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 2072-4292