Evaluation of the GPM IMERG v5 and TRMM 3B42 v7 Precipitation Products in the Yangtze River Basin, China

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to quantitatively evaluate the accuracy of the GPM IMERG v5 and the TRMM 3B42 v7, with the reference of 224 rain gauge stations over the Yangtze River basin in China from April 2014 to December 2017. The results showed that: (1) The changing pattern of IMERG v5 was similar to the 3B42 v7, and higher correlations can be found between the satellite-based precipitation products (SPPs) and observed precipitation for the monthly and annual time scale; (2) the IMERG v5 tended to overestimate the distribution range of the main rain band while the 3B42 v7 underestimated the precipitation in Sichuan basin, and the largest differences were found for the precipitation less than 1 mm/d for two SPPs; (3) both of the IMERG v5 and 3B42 v7 overestimated the precipitation in the lower elevation areas (<3000 m), while the opposite was true for areas ≥ 3000 m (RBIMERG v5 = −5.42%, RB3B42 v7 = −1.87%), and the retrieved results of PPDFc index and average precipitation at different altitudes for IMERG v5 were better than 3B42 v7. This study highlighted that IMERG v5 performed generally better than 3B42 v7 in detecting precipitation, especially light precipitation in the Yangtze River basin, indicating the great potential utility in hydrological applications. However, its poor skills when retrieving data for high precipitation events and for detecting complex terrain environments remains, leaving room for IMERG v5 to improve its inversion algorithm.