Identification

Title

Comparison of gridded multi-satellite with gridded rain gauge data over West Africa

Abstract

Two monthly gridded precipitation datasets of the Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP; the multisatellite product) and the Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC) Variability Analysis of Surface Climate Observations (VASClimO; rain gauge data) are compared for a 22-yr period, from January 1979 to December 2000, over land areas (i.e., latitudes 4°-20°N and longitudes 18°W-15°E). The two datasets are consistent with respect to the spatial distribution of the annual and seasonal rainfall climatology over the domain and along latitudinal bands. However, the satellite generally overestimates rainfall. The inability of the GPCC data to capture the bimodal rainfall pattern along the Guinea coast (i.e., south of latitude 8°N) is an artifact of the interpolation of the rain gauge data. For interannual variability, the gridded multisatellite and gridded gauge datasets agree on the sign of the anomaly 15 out of the 22 yr (68% of the time) for region 1 (between longitude 5° and 18°W and north of latitude 8°N) and 18 out of the 22 yr (82% of the time) for region 2 (between longitude 5°W and 15°E and north of latitude 8°N). The datasets agreed on the sign of the anomaly 14 out of the 22 yr (64% of the time) over the Guinea Coast. The magnitudes of the anomaly are very different in all years. Most of the years during which the two datasets did not agree on the sign of the anomaly were years with El Niño events. The ratio of the seasonal root-mean-square differences to the seasonal mean rainfall range between 0.24 and 2.60. The Kendall's tau statistic indicated statistically significant trends in both datasets, separately.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7qr4xbd

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2008-01-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

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Use constraints

Copyright 2008 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law (17 USC, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the Society's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statements, requires written permission or license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policies, available from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or amspubs@ametsoc.org. Permission to place a copy of this work on this server has been provided by the AMS. The AMS does not guarantee that the copy provided here is an accurate copy of the published work.

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact