TY - JOUR
T1 - Gauging the ungauged
T2 - estimating rainfall in a West African urbanized river basin using ground-based and spaceborne sensors
AU - Bogerd, Linda
AU - Pinto, Rose B.
AU - Leijnse, Hidde
AU - Meirink, Jan Fokke
AU - van Emmerik, Tim H.M.
AU - Uijlenhoet, Remko
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - Accurate precipitation observations are crucial for hydrological forecasts, notably over rapidly responding urban areas. This study evaluated the accuracy of three gridded spaceborne rainfall products (Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM (IMERG), Meteosat Second Generation Visible (MSG-VIS), and MSG-Infrared (MSG-IR)) and the non-governmental Trans-African Hydro-Meteorological Observatory (TAHMO) gauges across the Odaw catchment (Accra, Ghana) from January 2020-July 2022. IMERG is hardly able to capture the strong spatial variability of rainfall required for flood forecasting, but agrees in annual sums with TAHMO and MSG-IR. MSG-IR has difficulties during the wet season. MSG-VIS, only available during daylight, shows limited accuracy and gives high estimates while other products do not detect rain. TAHMO gauges effectively record high-intensity events and their strong spatial variability, although some (daily) accumulations are doubtful and data gaps exist due to technical issues. These findings assist hydrological modelers in selecting appropriate datasets at suitable spatiotemporal resolutions for their research.
AB - Accurate precipitation observations are crucial for hydrological forecasts, notably over rapidly responding urban areas. This study evaluated the accuracy of three gridded spaceborne rainfall products (Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM (IMERG), Meteosat Second Generation Visible (MSG-VIS), and MSG-Infrared (MSG-IR)) and the non-governmental Trans-African Hydro-Meteorological Observatory (TAHMO) gauges across the Odaw catchment (Accra, Ghana) from January 2020-July 2022. IMERG is hardly able to capture the strong spatial variability of rainfall required for flood forecasting, but agrees in annual sums with TAHMO and MSG-IR. MSG-IR has difficulties during the wet season. MSG-VIS, only available during daylight, shows limited accuracy and gives high estimates while other products do not detect rain. TAHMO gauges effectively record high-intensity events and their strong spatial variability, although some (daily) accumulations are doubtful and data gaps exist due to technical issues. These findings assist hydrological modelers in selecting appropriate datasets at suitable spatiotemporal resolutions for their research.
KW - Accra
KW - floods
KW - precipitation
KW - raingauges
KW - satellite measurements
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85178652794&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/02626667.2023.2284871
DO - 10.1080/02626667.2023.2284871
M3 - Comment/Letter to the editor
AN - SCOPUS:85178652794
SN - 0262-6667
VL - 69
SP - 259
EP - 273
JO - Hydrological Sciences Journal
JF - Hydrological Sciences Journal
IS - 2
ER -