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Evaluation of precipitation products over different climatic zones of Pakistan

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Abstract

This study evaluates three precipitation products including the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA), Asian Precipitation Highly Resolved Observational Data Integration Towards Evaluation (APHRODITE, hereafter abbreviated as APH), and Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information using Artificial Neural Network Climate Data Record (PERSIANN-CDR, hereafter abbreviated as PCDR) using surface precipitation gauge (SPG) data of 43 stations over five climatic zones of Pakistan for the period 1998 − 2015 on multiple temporal scales. Multiple statistical performance metrics and categorical statistics were utilized for evaluating the precipitation products such as mean error (ME), mean absolute error (MAE), root mean square error (RMSE), correlation coefficient (CC), standard deviation (SD), probability of detection (POD), critical success index (CSI), and false alarm ratio (FAR), whereas probability distribution function (PDF) technique was employed to evaluate the precipitation intensities, and Mann–Kendall (MK) test was used for assessing the trends. Blend of over- and underestimation between SPG-TMPA, SPG-APH, and SPG-PCDR were perceived in different climatic zones on all temporal scales. MAE and RMSE of daily were higher than monthly and annual temporal scales. TMPA demonstrated slightly better results in comparison to APH and PCDR in all five climatic zones by analyzing precipitation intensity. The magnitude of the trend was less in the first half (1998 − 2006) as compared to the second half (2007 − 2015). All precipitation products performed better in climatic zones situated in plain areas in comparison to high mountainous regions. It is concluded that TMPA can be a better substitute of SPG for agriculture modeling, weather analysis, and water resource management studies.

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Data Availability

Satellite datasets utilized in this research are open-source and were acquired from www.trmm.gsfc.nasa.gov; http://aphrodite.st.hirosaki-u.ac.jp/download/; and https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdr/atmospheric/, whereas ground data (SPG) was acquired from Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD), Pakistan, and cannot be shared publicly.

Code availability

The code used to extract the data is available from the corresponding author upon request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Pakistan Meteorological Department for providing observed precipitation data, NASA and JAXA for providing TRMM data (www.trmm.gsfc.nasa.gov), the Water Resource Project for providing APHRODITE data, and the Center for Hydrometeorology and Remote Sensing for PERSIANN-CDR data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Applied Geo-Informatics Research Lab, Department of Meteorology, COMSATS University Islamabad (CUI), Park Road, Chak Shahzad, 45550, Islamabad, Pakistan

    Muhammad Kaleem Ullah Khan, Muhammad Farooq Iqbal, Irfan Mahmood & Muhammad Imran Shahzad

  2. Climatology and Environment Section, Global Change Impact Studies Centre (GCISC), Islamabad, Pakistan

    Qudsia Zafar

  3. Department of Environmental Sciences, International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan

    Bushra Khalid

  4. Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Bushra Khalid

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  1. Muhammad Kaleem Ullah Khan
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation was done by Muhammad Kaleem Ullah Khan, Muhammad Farooq Iqbal, Irfan Mahmood, and Muhammad Imran Shahzad, whereas data collection was carried out by Muhammad Kaleem Ullah Khan, Muhammad Farooq Iqbal, and Bushra Khalid. Analysis of the study are carried out by Muhammad Kaleem Ullah Khan, Muhammad Farooq Iqbal, Irfan Mahmood, and Qudsia Zafar. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Muhammad Kaleem Ullah Khan and Muhammad Farooq Iqbal, and all authors contributed to the final version of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Muhammad Farooq Iqbal.

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Khan, M.K.U., Iqbal, M.F., Mahmood, I. et al. Evaluation of precipitation products over different climatic zones of Pakistan. Theor Appl Climatol 151, 1301–1321 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-022-04355-3

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