Title

The evolution of remotely sensed precipitation products for hydrological applications with a focus on the Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM)

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Journal of Environmental Hydrology

Abstract

This study examines the evolution of how remotely sensed precipitation products have impacted hydrologic modeling from six basins across the continental United States. Precipi- tation products include both ground-based (Multisensor Precipitation Estimator - MPE) and space-based products. Two space-based products are from the Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM) and include the real-time TRMM Multi-Satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA-RT) and TRMM 3B42 Research product. Precipitation products are compared be- tween early (2004-2007) and late (2008-2010) periods. Additionally, version 6 and the new version 7 of these TRMM products are examined. Watersheds examined were moderately large (1233 to 8905 square kilometers) and include the San Pedro (Arizona), Cimarron (Oklahoma); Alapaha (Georgia), mid-Nueces (Texas), San Casimiro (Texas), and the mid-Rio Grande basins, which is a bi-national basin that spans the Texas-Mexico border. Precipitation products are used to drive streamflow simulations using the Soil Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). The main results of this study concludes that MPE is a mature remote sensing product that generally supports superior hydrologic simulations based on standard performance metrics such as mass balance error and Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency coefficient. Both versions of TRMM products generally support acceptable simulations. Improved performance during the late period for TMPA-RT is noted and this improvement is related to modification of TRMM in January 2009 with the addition of more satellite data and a climatologic bias correction, which greatly improves the real-time TMPA-RT product.

Publication Date

8-28-2013

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