Evaluation of TRMM/GPM Blended Daily Products over Brazil

The precipitation estimates from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (named TMPA and TMPA-RT for the near real-time version) are widely used both in research and in operational forecasting. However, they will be discontinued soon. The products from the Integrated Multi-satellite Retrievals for Global Precipitation Measurement (IMERG) and The Global Satellite Mapping of Precipitation (GSMaP) are analyzed as potential replacements for TMPA products. The objective of this study is to assess whether the IMERG and/or GSMaP products can properly replace TMPA in several regions with different precipitation regimes within Brazil. The validation study was conducted during the period from 1st of April, 2014 to the 28th of February, 2017 (1065 days), using daily accumulated rain gauge stations over Brazil. Six regions were considered for this study: five according to the precipitation regime, plus another one for the entire Brazilian territory. IMERG-Final, TMPA-V7 and GSMaP-Gauges were the selected versions of those algorithms for this validation study, which include a bias adjustment with monthly (IMERG and TMPA) and daily (GSMaP) gauge accumulations, because they are widely used in the user’s community. Results indicate similar behavior for IMERG and TMPA products, showing that they overestimate precipitation, while GSMaP tend to slightly underestimate the amount of rainfall in most of the analyzed regions. The exception is the northeastern coast of Brazil, where all products underestimate the daily rainfall accumulations. For all analyzed regions, GSMaP and IMERG products present a better performance compared to TMPA products; therefore, they could be suitable replacements for the TMPA. This is particularly important for hydrological forecasting in small river basins, since those products present a finer spatial and temporal resolution compared with TMPA.