With the objective of understanding the potential and limitations of satellite precipitation products for hydrological studies, this article compares TRMM (Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission) precipitation product with observed precipitation data and analyzes its impacts on the water balance of the Upper Heihe River basin in Northwest China. TRMM 3b42 daily precipitation data were used to run the SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tools) model for the period 1998~2000 after compared to gauged precipitations. Three stations were selected as the reference precipitation datasets. The results show that basin wide annual average precipitation relative error is only 8%, and TRMM monthly data performed relatively well with the correlation coefficients all above 0.85. Model results reveal that TRMM can reproduce the water cycle reasonably well at the basin scale and monthly time step.

Date Published: 19 March 2013
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 8762, PIAGENG 2013: Intelligent Information, Control, and Communication Technology for Agricultural Engineering, 87620R (19 March 2013); doi: 10.1117/12.2019868

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8762:
PIAGENG 2013: Intelligent Information, Control, and Communication Technology for Agricultural Engineering
Honghua Tan, Editor(s)