Validation of Precipitation Events in ERA5 to Gauge Observations during Warm Seasons over Eastern China

Abstract

Abstract Precipitation events should be characterized using data with high temporal resolution, such as hourly precipitation. Event-based evaluation can provide more information than the traditional equal-time-interval method by considering precipitation intermittency. This study focuses on the performance of hourly gauge observations and ERA5 products based on precipitation events in eastern China during 1979–2015. The annual frequency, duration, amount, and intensity of precipitation events are compared, and the statistics of precipitation events with different durations are also evaluated. Results show that ERA5 estimated more annual precipitation events and longer duration compared to the gauge observations, with relative deviation values of 48.75% and 49.22% at the national scale. Precipitation intensity and amount estimated by ERA5 based on precipitation events were less than those obtained from gauge observations, and the discrepancies in low-latitude regions were greater than those in high-latitude areas. The frequency of precipitation events decreased exponentially with duration for both ERA5 and gauge observations, but generally the value for the former was larger than for the latter. The statistics related to precipitation events showed smaller trends for ERA5 than for gauge observations, i.e., −0.13 h decade−1 and −0.17 mm decade−1 for the trends of duration and amount in ERA5, which contrasts with 0.03 h decade−1 and 0.14 mm decade−1 for gauge observations, respectively. These results can provide a reference for improving the parameterization scheme of the precipitation triggering mechanism in the process of model simulation.