Improved Monitoring and Assessment of Meteorological Drought Based on Multi-Source Fused Precipitation Data

Abstract

Meteorological drought, one of the most frequent climate-related disasters, causes great danger for human health and socioeconomic development. With an aim to improve the accuracy of meteorological drought monitoring, this study collected multi-source remotely-sensed precipitation products, i.e., the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), the Global Precipitation Measurement Mission (GPM), and Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Station data (CHIRPS), and compared their performance over Hubei Province, China. The geographic difference analysis was used to blend the best-fitted product with gauged precipitation data. Based on the fused dataset with verification, the spatio-temporal characteristics of drought were investigated. Results showed that GPM performed the best in precipitation numerical evaluation and event detection with a 5 mm/d threshold. The fused data accurately captured 80% of historical drought events and indicated that extreme annual droughts mainly occurred in the northern and northwestern regions, while slight, moderate, and severe droughts mainly occurred in the central and eastern parts. The short-term drought exhibited the highest frequency of 33% in summer and the lowest frequency of 27% in spring, while the medium-term drought showed a higher frequency in autumn and winter. This could be a preliminary assessment of drought based on multi-source fused precipitation data for precise drought outlook and risk management.

Evaluation of SPI and Rainfall Departure Based on Multi-Satellite Precipitation Products for Meteorological Drought Monitoring in Tamil Nadu

“…In comparison, the TRMM fits the Z-I and Z-II drought assessments better, whereas the CHIRPS fits the Z-III drought analysis better [75,76]. Even at a 5 mm/d threshold, GPM worked best for numerical evaluation of precipitation and event detection [50].…”

“…In comparison, the TRMM fits the Z-I and Z-II drought assessments better, whereas the CHIRPS fits the Z-III drought analysis better [75,76]. Even at a 5 mm/d threshold, GPM worked best for numerical evaluation of precipitation and event detection [50]. The per cent agreement between precipitation from precipitation production and observed values from AWS showed that IMERGH registered the highest agreement per cent of 89.76, followed by 82.54 by TRMM.…”

“…SPI is considered for its applicability and practical implications over time periods (3, 6, or 12 months). Several studies compared the effectiveness of SPI-based drought monitoring to that of other indices in various climatic locations [48][49][50][51][52][53][54]. They resulted in increased efficiency of SPI over other indices in detecting drought incidents.…”

Drought monitoring performance of global precipitation products in three wet seasons in Ethiopia: Part I—Quasi‐objective examination

“…Similarly, Yan et al (2018) indicated that TRMM-3B43 has a good performance in representing the observed drought events over southwest China. In the other part of China, that is, over the plane land of Hubei Province, GPM precipitation data showed superior performance over CHIRPS and TRMM in representing historical droughts (Chen et al, 2022). Although some level of consistency between data products reported for GPCC, PERSIANN-CDR and CHIRPS (Wei et al, 2019) and between GPCC, CRU and the University of Delaware (Wei et al, 2020) precipitation products in representing drought events in most of China, GPCC outperformed the others and data products showed heterogeneity in representing drought events over the plateau area.…”

Effectiveness of Drought Indices in the Assessment of Different Types of Droughts, Managing and Mitigating Their Effects

“…In recent decades and today, drought indices have been widely used as tools to assess and monitor drought conditions [82][83][84]. For assessing the most prominent indexes for each type of drought, Keyantash et al [85] used a weighted total of six evaluation criteria for the period 1980-2015, and Li et al [86] used two universally used meteorological drought indexes, the SPI and SPEI, to elucidate drought conditions across China.…”