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. 2014 Apr 1;9(4):e89681.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0089681. eCollection 2014.

Evaluation of high-resolution precipitation estimates from satellites during July 2012 Beijing flood event using dense rain gauge observations

Sheng Chen  1 , Huijuan Liu  2 , Yalei You  3 , Esther Mullens  4 , Junjun Hu  5 , Ye Yuan  2 , Mengyu Huang  6 , Li He  7 , Yongming Luo  7 , Xingji Zeng  8 , Guoqiang Tang  9 , Yang Hong  1
Affiliations

Evaluation of high-resolution precipitation estimates from satellites during July 2012 Beijing flood event using dense rain gauge observations

Sheng Chen et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Satellite-based precipitation estimates products, CMORPH and PERSIANN-CCS, were evaluated with a dense rain gauge network over Beijing and adjacent regions for an extremely heavy precipitation event on July 21 2012. CMORPH and PEERSIANN-CSS misplaced the region of greatest rainfall accumulation, and failed to capture the spatial pattern of precipitation, evidenced by a low spatial correlation coefficient (CC). CMORPH overestimated the daily accumulated rainfall by 22.84% while PERSIANN-CCS underestimated by 72.75%. In the rainfall center, both CMORPH and PERSIANN-CCS failed to capture the temporal variation of the rainfall, and underestimated rainfall amounts by 43.43% and 87.26%, respectively. Based on our results, caution should be exercised when using CMORPH and PERSIANN-CCS as input for monitoring and forecasting floods in Beijing urban areas, and the potential for landslides in the mountainous zones west and north of Beijing.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Study area (a) outlined in red lines and Taihang and Yanshan Ranges distribution on the remote sensing map from the ArcGIS Map Service.
(b) Gauge distribution and topographic features in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei province.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Gauge analysis (a) based on Kriging interpolation.
(b) CMORPH accumulated precipitation (c) PERSIANN-CCS accumulated precipitation. (d) Scatter plots of gauge vs. CMORPH accumulated rainfall. (e) Scatter plot of gauge vs. PERSIANN-CCS accumulated rainfall. The red letter “A” in (a) indicates the rainfall center.
Figure 3
Figure 3. Time series rainfall over rainfall center of (a) large region HBT, (b) Beijing and (c) rainfall center.
(d) Time series mean brightness temperature at rainfall center shown in Figure 1d in the scale.
Figure 4
Figure 4. Occurrence probability distribution (a) of rain rate with interval of 0.1 mm/h, (b) volume cumulative distribution of rain rate with interval of 0.1 mm/h.
Figure 5
Figure 5. Contingency statistics for (a) POD, (b) CSI and (c) FAR.
The rainfall threshold used is from 1 to 30 with interval of 1/h.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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