Evaluation of TRMM 3B42 precipitation estimates and WRF retrospective precipitation simulation over the Pacific–Andean region of Ecuador and Peru
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Date
2014
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Abstract
The Pacific–Andean region in western South
America suffers from rainfall data scarcity, as is the case for
many regions in the South. An important research question is
whether the latest satellite-based and numerical weather prediction
(NWP) model outputs capture well the temporal and
spatial patterns of rainfall over the region, and hence have
the potential to compensate for the data scarcity. Based on an
interpolated gauge-based rainfall data set, the performance
of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) 3B42
V7 and its predecessor V6, and the North Western South
America Retrospective Simulation (OA-NOSA30) are evaluated
over 21 sub-catchments in the Pacific–Andean region
of Ecuador and Peru (PAEP).
In general, precipitation estimates from TRMM and OANOSA30
capture the seasonal features of precipitation in the
study area. Quantitatively, only the southern sub-catchments
of Ecuador and northern Peru (3.6–6◦ S) are relatively well
estimated by both products. The accuracy is considerably
less in the northern and central basins of Ecuador (0–3.6◦ S).
It is shown that the probability of detection (POD) is better
for light precipitation (POD decreases from 0.6 for rates less
than 5 mm day−1
to 0.2 for rates higher than 20 mm day−1
).
Compared to its predecessor, 3B42 V7 shows modest regionwide
improvements in reducing biases. The improvement is
specific to the coastal and open ocean sub-catchments. In
view of hydrological applications, the correlation of TRMM
and OA-NOSA30 estimates with observations increases wit
Resumen
Keywords
Lluvia, America Del Sur, Precipitaciones, Metereologia, Ecuador, Peru