Validation and Intercomparison of Satellite-Based Rainfall Products over Africa with TAHMO In Situ Rainfall Observations

Abstract

Increasingly, satellite-derived rainfall data are used for climate research and action in Africa. In this study, we use 6 years of rain gauge data from 596 stations operated by the Trans-African Hydrometeorological Observatory (TAHMO) to validate three gauge-calibrated satellite rainfall products—CHIRPS, TAMSAT, and GSMaP_wGauge—and one satellite-only rainfall product, GSMaP. Validations are stratified to evaluate performance across the continent and in East Africa, southern Africa, and West Africa at daily, pentadal, and monthly time scales. For daily mean rainfall over Africa, CHIRPS has the highest bias at 15.5% (0.5 mm) whereas GSMaP_wGauge has the lowest bias at 0.02 mm (0.7%). We find higher daily rainfall event detection scores in the GSMaP products than in CHIRPS or TAMSAT. Generally, for every two rainfall events predicted by CHIRPS and TAMSAT, the GSMaP products predict three or more events. The highest mean monthly biases are produced by CHIRPS in East Africa (29%; wet bias of 26.3 mm), TAMSAT in southern Africa (13%; dry bias of 10.4 mm), and GSMaP in West Africa (23%; wet bias of 19.6 mm). Considerable biases in seasonal rainfall are observed in all subregions for every satellite product. There is an increase of 0.6–1.3 mm in satellite rainfall RMSE for a 1-km increase in elevation revealing the influence of elevation on rainfall estimation by satellite models. Overall, satellite-derived rainfall products have notable errors, while GSMaP products produce comparable or better results at multiple time scales relative to CHIRPS and TAMSAT.