Comparison of high-resolution TRMM-based precipitation products during tropical cyclones in the North Indian Ocean

In order to evaluate the performance of satellite-retrieved precipitation estimation during cyclonic events, qualitative and quantitative evaluation of surface rain rate from three different data products namely TMI-2A12, TMPA-3B42, and GSMaP are carried out with respect to PR-2A25 data product. For this purpose, four recent tropical cyclones in the North Indian Ocean (NIO) during 2009–2010 are considered. Some aspects of the associated environmental wind fields are also investigated for their relationship with the tropical rainfall intensity in the individual cases. The relatively small root-mean-square error (RMSE) of TMPA-3B42 product shows better performance than the other two precipitation products during low to moderate rainfall regimes. But, the negative bias associated with all the three precipitation products show underestimation of rain rates with respect to PR derived rain rates. Furthermore, the GSMaP precipitation product shows better compliance than the TMPA-3B42 product with PR rain rate under extreme (more than 10 mm h−1) rain events. The lack of information regarding the associated uncertainties and reliability of these precipitation products suggest that substantial efforts are necessary to develop algorithms that can capture such extreme precipitation events more reliably.