Validation of satellite rainfall products over East Africa's complex topography

An extensive evaluation of 10 different satellite rainfall products was performed using station network over a complex topography, where elevation varies from below sea level to 4620 m. Evaluation was for two groups of products. The first group had low spatial (2.5°) and temporal (monthly) resolution and included the Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP), the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration Climate Prediction Center (NOAA-CPC) merged analysis (CMAP), and the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM-3B43). The second group comprised products with relatively high spatial (0.1° to 1°) and temporal (3-hourly to 10-daily) resolution. These included the NOAA-CPC African rainfall estimation algorithm, GPCP one-degree-daily (1DD), TRMM-3B42, Tropical Applications of Meteorology using SATellite and other data (TAMSAT) estimates, and the CPC morphing technique (CMORPH). These products were aggregated to a 10-day total and remapped to spatial resolutions of 1°, 0.5° and 0.25°. TRMM-3B43 and CMAP from the first group and CMORPH, TAMSAT and TRMM-3B42 from the second group performed reasonably well.