Identification

Title

Comparison of global precipitation estimates across a range of temporal and spatial scales

Abstract

Characteristics of precipitation estimates for rate and amount from three global high-resolution precipitation products (HRPPs), four global climate data records (CDRs), and four reanalyses are compared. All datasets considered have at least daily temporal resolution. Estimates of global precipitation differ widely from one product to the next, with some differences likely due to differing goals in producing the estimates. HRPPs are intended to produce the best snapshot of the precipitation estimate locally. CDRs of precipitation emphasize homogeneity over instantaneous accuracy. Precipitation estimates from global reanalyses are dynamically consistent with the large-scale circulation but tend to compare poorly to rain gauge estimates since they are forecast by the reanalysis system and precipitation is not assimilated. Regional differences among the estimates in the means and variances are as large as the means and variances, respectively. Even with similar monthly totals, precipitation rates vary significantly among the estimates. Temporal correlations among datasets are large at annual and daily time scales, suggesting that compensating bias errors at annual and random errors at daily time scales dominate the differences. However, the signal-to-noise ratio at intermediate (monthly) time scales can be large enough to result in high correlations overall. It is shown that differences on annual time scales and continental regions are around 0.8 mm day−1, which corresponds to 23 W m−2. These wide variations in the estimates, even for global averages, highlight the need for better constrained precipitation products in the future.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7930vvh

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

2016-11-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Copyright 2016 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