Analysis of the IMERG-GPM Precipitation Product Analysis in Brazilian Midwestern Basins Considering Different Time and Spatial Scales

Abstract

Precipitation products derived from satellites have emerged as a promising approach for obtaining precipitation estimates, enabling accurate long-term observations and describing the water cycle dynamics from a global scale to a local scale. The quality of these products has improved significantly in the last decades, especially with the emergence of TRMM missions and its successor GPM. The objective of this study was to evaluate the daily, monthly and annual precipitation estimates provided by IMERG version 05 of the GPM, with the data observed by the rainfall stations of the Brazilian Agency of Water and Sanitation (ANA) in the basins of the Brazilian midwest. In order to compare the data, the spatialization of the data of the rainfall stations was performed by means of the ordinary kriging technique, interpolating the data for grids of 0.1° × 0.1° that correspond to the specialized grids of the GPM satellite. The data were evaluated quantitatively by means of statistical metrics. The GPM satellite precipitation product performed relatively well on a daily scale for regions with smooth topography, and was able to describe the rainfall regime on larger time scales, regardless of the terrain conditions. However, the satellite retrievals were unable to reproduce rainfall extremes in virtually all situations, which may limit their application in frequency analyses.