Iran-Water Resources Research

Iran-Water Resources Research

Assessing the Accuracy of Satellite and Reanalysis Precipitation in Iran, Focusing on Datasets with High Spatial Resolution

Document Type : Original Article

Authors
1 Assisstant Professor, Department of Energy, Institute of Science and High Technology and Environmental Science, Graduate University of Advanced Technology, Kerman, Iran.
2 Assisstant Professor, Department of Ecology, Institute of Science and High Technology and Environmental Science, Graduate University of Advanced Technology, Kerman, Iran.
3 Assisstant Professor, Department of Water Resources Study and Research, Water Research Institute, Tehran, Iran.
Abstract
Precipitation, as one of the main components of the hydrological cycle, plays a significant role in the processes related to water resources management, environmental protection, and weather disaster management. Due to lack of or limited access to widespread rainfall data in the country, the use of global rainfall data obtained from remote sensing and modeling can be very useful in analyzes required in the field of water resources management. This paper evaluates the accuracy of the latest global precipitation databases resulting from reanalysis and satellite data with high spatial resolution (ERA5-Land, GSMaP, IMERG, MSWEP and CHIRPS) in estimating precipitation at different time scales in Iran. For this purpose, rainfall data in 70 synoptic stations in the country were used for the period of 2000 to 2018, and the performance of the databases in question was investigated at daily, monthly and annual time scales, separately for 6 different climatic regions. The results showed that the rainfall estimation in these databases is more accurate for the rainiest regions of the country than the dry regions, and generally the accuracy of the rainfall estimation is higher in the rainy months of the year than in the dry period of the year. In general, better performance was recorded by the GSMaP database in estimating daily rainfall and by the MSWEP database in estimating monthly and annual rainfall in Iran compared to other databases; However, the accuracy of each database depends on the desired time scale and the climatic region under investigation, which must be taken into account.
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  • Receive Date 10 February 2024
  • Revise Date 04 March 2024
  • Accept Date 24 March 2024