The activities of the international precipitation working group

Abstract

The International Precipitation Working Group (IPWG) is a permanent International Science Working Group (ISWG) of the Coordination Group for Meteorological Satellites (CGMS), co‐sponsored by CGMS and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The IPWG provides a focal point and forum for the international scientific community to address the issues and challenges of satellite‐based quantitative precipitation retrievals, and for the operational agencies to access and make use of precipitation products. Through partnerships and biennial meetings, the group supports the exchange of information on techniques for retrieving and measuring precipitation and for enhancing the impact of space‐borne precipitation retrievals in numerical weather and hydrometeorological prediction and climate studies. The group furthers the refinement of current estimation techniques and the development of new methodologies for improved global precipitation measurements, together with the validation of the derived precipitation products with ground‐based precipitation measurements. The IPWG identifies critical issues, provides recommendations to the CGMS and supports upcoming precipitation‐oriented missions. Training activities on precipitation retrieval from space are also part of the IPWG mandate in cooperation with WMO and other bodies.

Satellite and In Situ Observations for Advancing Global Earth Surface Modelling: A Review

“…The combination of multi-sources observations with models to ensure meteorological consistency is advocated as a way to increase accuracy. However, precipitation estimation for hydrological applications remains a challenge and motivates the continuous effort of the International Precipitation Working Group (IPWG), a permanent Working Group of the Coordination Group for Meteorological Satellites, active since 2001 [57]. Despite the effort of data collection of long term precipitation observations e.g., [58], a precipitation dataset that can support climate change studies and can be readily considered in reanalysis, remains largely unavailable.…”

A global-scale evaluation of extreme event uncertainty in the <i>eartH2Observe</i> project

“…prediction variation as a result of differing process representations within a model (e.g. Li and Wu, 2006), is commonly the dominant uncertainty in complex systems used in risk-informed decision-making (Oberkampf and Roy, 2010). Although historically often overlooked (Li and Wu, 2006), model uncertainty has recently come under increasing scrutiny in the context of land surface models (Huntingford et al, 2013;Long et al, 2014;Schewe et al, 2014;Ukkola et al, 2016).…”

“…Li and Wu, 2006), is commonly the dominant uncertainty in complex systems used in risk-informed decision-making (Oberkampf and Roy, 2010). Although historically often overlooked (Li and Wu, 2006), model uncertainty has recently come under increasing scrutiny in the context of land surface models (Huntingford et al, 2013;Long et al, 2014;Schewe et al, 2014;Ukkola et al, 2016). A lack of adequate representation of flood-generation processes (both from surface and subsurface runoff) and permafrost or snow dynamics can lead to an imprecise simulation of runoff peaks in many large river basins, and a lack of proper representation of wetland evaporation and human effects such as water consumption and inter-basin transfers can lead to over-or under-estimated discharge in many basins, especially those with large semi-arid regions (Bierkens, 2015;.…”

Estimation of extreme daily precipitation thermodynamic scaling using gridded satellite precipitation products over tropical land

“…The lack of data yields to a series of non-robust results about the scaling of daily extreme precipitation to temperature in the tropics (Utsumi et al 2011, Eiji et al 2012, Vittal et al 2016, Bao et al 2017, Barbero et al 2017, Wang et al 2017, Ali and Fowler 2018. A large number of multisource gridded precipitation products, including multiple satellites observations and microwave constellation-based products, has emerged in the recent decade (Levizzani et al 2018) that could help to alleviate this regional gap and clarify the observational relationship between precipitation extremes and surface temperature in the tropics. At daily scale satellite gridded products indeed exhibit significant skills at documenting meteorological variability in the tropics (Roca et al 2010, Gosset et al 2013, Guilloteau et al 2016, if not for the documentation of the extremes, and are characterized by improvements of the recent generation of products over the previous ones (Maggioni et al 2016, Beck et al 2017.…”