COMPARISON OF TRMM DERIVED RAINFALL PRODUCTS FOR
GENERAL AND EXTREME RAIN EVENTS OVER MARITIME CONTINENT
Andung Bayu Sekaranom1, Hirohiko Masunaga2
1Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Nagoya University. Furo-cho Chikusa-ku, Nagoya 464-8601, Japan. Email:andungbayu@geo.ugm.ac.id
2Center Institute for Space-Earth Environmental Research, Nagoya University. Furo-cho Chikusa-ku, Nagoya 464-8601, Japan.
BACKGROUNDS
A large number of natural hazards occurred
over The Maritime Continent due to high
frequency of extreme precipitation.
TRMM measurements from the end of 1997
to 2014 have enabled the detection of
numerous rare events (particularly extreme
rainfall) and provides information regarding
various key aspects related to such events.
Due to the different nature of the active (PR)
and passive (TMI) sensors in the TRMM,
discrepancies exist among the TRMM-
derived rainfall products.
very few studies have addressed issues
related to data comparison and validation
with a focus on areas with intense extreme
rain events.
DATA AND METHODS
This work focuses on the discrepancies
among three TRMM-derived precipitation
data, namely, PR 2A25, TMI 2A12, TMPA
3B42 from 1998-2014.
An extreme database data was constructed
for the uppermost 1% rain-rate over 90E-
150E and 15S-15N (Figure 1).
All of the corresponding data were
collocated to 0.25 x 0.25, including PR
reflectivity, storm height, and TMI brightness
temperature.
Figure 1. Study area location and the corresponding
TMI surface flag
GENERAL COMPARISON
The exceedance probability (Figure 2)
indicates that PR generally produces a
higher exceedance probability than TMI and
TMPA over ocean and coast.
It appears that the TMI land algorithm
produces a higher exceedance probability
between 10-25 mm/h. However, the TMI
exceedance probability rapidly decreases
after >25 mm/h.
Figure 2. Comparison of PR2A25, TMI2A12, and
TMPA 3B42 rain exceedance probability.
The relationship between rain rate and PCT
is broadly spread except for the TMI land
and coast, in which the rain rate is tightly
correlated with PCT since the algorithms
only relies on the ice-scattering channels for
land and partially for coast (Figure 3).
Figure 3. Total number of rain events based on rain
rates and TMI minimum 85 GHz PCTs.
EXTREME RAIN COMPARISON
TMI yields a higher storm top height for any
given rain rate over land and coast
compared to PR and TMPA. PR and TMPA,
in contrast, exhibit lower storm top heights
over land (Figure 4).
The relation of surface rain with PCT,
examined in terms of collocated PR vertical
rain profiles shows that over land, the
vertical rain profiles disagree among the
products compared to the ocean. The PR-
identified extreme rain profiles exhibit a
significant increase in rain rate from 5 km to
near the surface (Figure 5).
Figure 4. Collocated PR storm top height with the
uppermost 1% rain rates as a function of TMI 85 GHz
minimum PCTs.
Figure 5. Collocated PR2A25 vertical rain rate
mean for the uppermost 1% extremes as classified
by four TMI minimum 85 GHz PCT ranges.
the exceedance probabilities of the global
tropics and a few representative regions
across the tropics imply that a similar
discrepancy also exists on a global scale.
The regional comparison shows that the
probabilities are homogeneous over ocean
but have large variations over land (Figure
6).
Figure 6. Global and regional comparison of PR,
TMI, and TMPA rain exceedance probabilities.
CONCLUSION
The PR-TMI discrepancies in representing
the uppermost 1% extremes highlights the
known weakness in the TMI land algorithm.
The TMI land estimates highly depend on the
existence of ice particles aloft in precipitating
clouds since it assumes a tight relationship
between ice- scattering signals and surface
rain rates. Heavy rain events are generally
associated with stronger convection, which
contains ice particles aloft.
It has been shown that the rain rate-ice
scattering relationship is not always robust.
Very intense rain events identified by PR are
not associated with the highest storm top
height and are thus unlikely with most grown
ice particles aloft and is often produced by a
system with a relatively low storm height.