Evaluating the performances of gridded satellite/ reanalysis products in representing the rainfall climatology of Ethiopia
Authors:
This study evaluated performances of the Climate Hazard Group
Infrared Precipitation with stations version 2.0 (CHIRPS v2.0) and
Multi-Source Weighted-Ensemble Precipitation version 2.8 (MSWEP
v2.8) products against observed data. Rainfall climatology was
simulated for different agro-ecological zones (AEZs) of Ethiopia during
1991–2020 at different temporal scales. Performance evaluations
were made using continuous and statistical performance
measures as well as Probability Density Function (PDF). CHIRPS v2.0
for estimating monthly, seasonal, and annual rainfall totals, and
MSWEP v2.8 for daily rainfall have shown better performance over
all AEZs. The two products display comparable performance for
detecting daily rainfall occurrences over alpine AEZ, but MSWEP
v2.8 is superior in the rest four AEZs. CHIRPS v2.0 outperforms
MSWEP v2.8 for detecting most of the daily rainfall intensity classes
over all AEZs. The findings will play a noteworthy role to improve
the quality of hydro-climate studies in Ethiopia.