Evaluation of the TRMM Product for Monitoring Drought over Paraíba State, Northeastern Brazil: A Statistical Analysis

Abstract

Drought is a natural phenomenon that originates from the absence of precipitation over a certain period and is capable of causing damage to societal development. With the advent of orbital remote sensing, rainfall estimates from satellites have appeared as viable alternatives to monitor natural hazards in ungauged basins and complex areas of the world; however, the accuracies of these orbital products still need to be verified. Thus, this work aims to evaluate the performance of Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite rainfall estimates in monitoring the spatiotemporal behavior of droughts at multiple temporal scales over Paraíba State based on the standardized precipitation index (SPI) over 20 years (1998–2017). For this purpose, rainfall data from 78 rain gauges and 187 equally spaced TRMM cell grids throughout the region are used, and accuracy analyses are performed at the single-gauge level and in four mesoregions at eight different time scales based on 11 statistical metrics calculations divided into three different categories. The results show that in the mesoregions close to the coast, the satellite-based product is less accurate in capturing the drought behavior regardless of the evaluated statistical metrics. At the temporal scale, the TRMM is more accurate in identifying the pattern of medium-term droughts; however, there is considerable spatial variation in the accuracy of the product depending on the performance index. Therefore, it is concluded that rainfall estimates from the TRMM satellite are a valuable source of data to identify drought behavior in a large part of Paraíba State at different time scales, and further multidisciplinary studies should be conducted to monitor these phenomena more accurately based on satellite data.