Validation of high-resolution TRMM-3B43 precipitation product using rain gauge measurements over Kyrgyzstan

This paper presents the validation of monthly precipitation using Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission Multisatellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA)—3B43 product with conventional rain gauge observations for the period 1998–2007 over Kyrgyzstan. This study is carried out to quantify the accuracy of TMPA-3B43 product over the high latitude and complex orographic region. The present work is quite important because it is highly desirable to compare the TMPA precipitation product with the ground truth data at a regional scale, so that the satellite product can be fine-tuned at that scale. For the validation, four different types of spatial collocation have been used: station wise, climatic zone wise, topographically and seasonal. The analysis has been done at the same spatial and temporal scales in order to eliminate the sampling biases in the comparisons. The results show that TMPA-3B43 product has statistically significant correlation (r = 0.36–0.88) with rain gauge data over the most parts of the country. The minimum linear correlation is observed around the large continental water bodies (e.g., Issyk-Kul lake; r = 0.17–0.19). The overall result suggests that the precipitation estimated using TMPA-3B43 product performs reasonably well over the plain regions and even over the orographic regions except near the big lake regions. Also, the negative bias suggests the systematic underestimation of high precipitation by TMPA-3B43 product. The analyses suggest the need of a better algorithm for precipitation estimation over this region separately to capture the different types of rain events more reliably.