H13H-1666
Evaluation of IMERG Satellite Rainfall Estimates in the Blue Nile Basin
Monday, 14 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Mekonnen Gebremichael, University of California Los Angeles, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Los Angeles, CA, United States
Abstract:
The demand for accurate satellite rainfall products is increasing particularly in Africa where ground-based data are mostly unavailable, timely inaccessible, or unreliable. In this study, the accuracy of IMERG satellite rainfall products is assessed over the Blue Nile River Basin, a basin characterized by complex terrain and tropical monsoon. The assessment is made using relatively-dense experimental networks of rain gauges deployed at two, 0.25°×0.25°, sites that represent contrasting topographic features: the lowland plain (mean elevation of 719 m.a.s.l.) site and the highland mountain (mean elevation of 2268 m.a.s.l.). The investigation period covers the summer seasons of 2014 and 2015. Compared to the highland mountain site, the lowland plain site exhibits marked extremes of rain intensity, higher rain intensity, lower frequency of rain occurrence, and smaller seasonal rainfall accumulation. We present the detailed error characteristics of the IMERG products at both the lowland plain and highland mountain.
