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Insight into the precipitation behavior of gridded precipitation data in the Sina basin

Environmental Monitoring and Assessment volume 192, Article number: 729 (2020) Cite this article

Abstract

This paper examines the performance of three gridded precipitation data sets, namely, Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC), Tropical Precipitation Measuring Mission (TRMM), and the Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA), for the duration of 25 years using 9 rain gauge data sets of the Sina basin, India. Statistical measures were employed to measure the performance in reproducing the rainfall and to assess its ability to detect the rainfall/no rainfall events, its structure, pattern, and spatio-temporal variations in the monthly and annual time scales. Compromise programming (CP) is used to rank the statistical performances of selected gridded precipitation data sets and found that TRMM attained first rank for the 8 stations followed by MERRA. The precipitation concentration index (PCI) checks the pattern and distribution of rainfall and found that observed data shows a uniform distribution in the basin; however, all the three gridded data sets failed to demonstrate uniform distribution. Categorical metrics like Probability of Detection (POD) and False Alarm Ratio (FAR) revealed that TRMM followed by MERRA and GPCC have good capabilities to detect rainfall/no rainfall events at different thresholds. All the trends drawn between observed data set and gridded precipitation data sets revealed that the MERRA data tend to underestimate and the TRMM and GPCC data tend to overestimate the values and intensities of rainfall data sets at most of the stations for both monthly and annual time scales. The data analysis of extreme rainfall points at monthly and annual time scales exhibits better performance of TRMM data sets. Overall, the TRMM data set is capable in replicating different characteristics of the observed data in the study area and could be used for hydro-meteorological and climatic studies when continuous observed data set is not available.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thankfully acknowledge the Ministry of Human Resource Department (MHRD) for the support and encouragement for this research. We thank the India Meteorological Department, Pune, for providing long-term gridded rainfall station data for research purposes. We are also very grateful to NASA GES DISC and NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center’s U.S for providing the TRMM and MERRA data. The authors are also grateful to the Editors and anonymous reviewers for their useful comments/suggestions that improved the manuscript significantly.

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  1. Department of Civil Engineering, National Institute of Technology Patna, Patna, 800 005, India

    Cheekati Sireesha & Thendiyath Roshni

  2. AgFE Department, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, 721 302, India

    Madan K. Jha

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  1. Cheekati Sireesha
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Correspondence to Thendiyath Roshni.

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Sireesha, C., Roshni, T. & Jha, M.K. Insight into the precipitation behavior of gridded precipitation data in the Sina basin. Environ Monit Assess 192, 729 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-020-08687-3

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Keywords

  • Precipitation
  • Satellite data set
  • Reanalysis data set
  • Compromise programming
  • Precipitation concentration index
  • Semi-arid region