Abstract:
In order to examine the reliability and applicability of Tropical Rainfall Measuring
Mission (TRMM) and Other Satellites Precipitation Product (3B42) Version 6
(TRMM-3B42) at basin scales, satellite rainfall estimates were compared with geo-
statistically interpolated reference data from 12 rain gauge stations for three con-
secutive years: 2005, 2006 and 2007. Gauge–TRMM-3B42 statistical properties for
daily, decadal and monthly multitemporal precipitations were compared using the
following cross-validation continuous statistical measures: mean bias error (MBE),
root mean square difference (RMSD), mean absolute difference (MAD) and coeffi-
cient of determination (r 2 ) metrics. The averaged spatial–temporal comparisons
showed that the TRMM-3B42 rainfall estimates were much closer to the geostatis-
tically interpolated gauge data, with minimal biases of −0.40 mm day −1 , −1.78 mm
decad −1 and −6.72 mm month −1 being observed in 2006. In the same year, the
gauge and TRMM-3B42 rainfall estimates marginally correlated better than in
2005 and 2007, with the daily, decadal and monthly coefficients of determination
being 82.2%, 93.9% and 96.5%, respectively. The results showed that the cor-
relations between the gauge-derived precipitation and the TRMM-3B42-derived
precipitation increased with increasing temporal intervals for all three consid-
ered years. Quantitatively, the TRMM-3B42 observations slightly overestimated
the precipitations during the wet seasons and underestimated the observed rain-
fall during the dry seasons. The results of the study show that the estimates
from TRMM-3B42 precipitation retrievals can effectively be applied in the inter-
polation of missing gauge data, and in the verification of precipitation uncer-
tainties at the basin scales with minor adjustments, depending on the timescales
considered.
