Evaluating the effectiveness of CHIRPS data for hydroclimatic studies

Du, Hongrong; Tan, Mou Leong; Zhang, Fei; Chun, Kwok; Li, Longhui; Humayun Kabir, Muhammad

Abstract

Long-term gridded precipitation products (GPPs) are crucial for climatology and hydrological research to overcome the limitations of gauge observations. Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Station data (CHIRPS) provides long-term daily precipitation data over the globe from 1981 to near-present, but its reliability varies across regions. This review aims to summarize the performance of CHIRPS from 123 research articles that published between 2015 and 2021.The findings show that the number of CHIRPS validation studies has been increased dramatically in the past two to three years. The studies were primarily conducted in China, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, and India, while a relatively few studies in North America, Central Asia, and Europe. The performance of CHIRPS varied depending on geographical location and climate condition, with better performance in Africa. In contrast to other GPPs, CHIRPS is always not the best product, but it is considerablely well in capturing monthly precipitation and is suitable for assessing drought. There are also shortcomings such as inaccurate estimation of sparse sites in complex terrain areas and inaccurate capture of extreme precipitation events. Future research directions on this topic should focus on: (1) enhancing CHIPRS through the integration of gauges, satellite and reanalysis data; (2) validating CHIRPS for extreme indices calculations and relate to large-scale atmospheric circulations like ENSO; (3) evaluating the capability of CHIRPS in hydrological modelling; and (4) further validating CHIRPS under various topographical and climate conditions. This review can act as a reference to scientists who wish to apply CHIRPS in their climatology analysis and hydro-climatic modelling as well as the CHIRPS developers to further improve the product.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Oct 24, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Nov 3, 2023
• Publication Date: Mar 1, 2024
• Deposit Date: Oct 24, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 4, 2024
• Journal: Theoretical and Applied Climatology
• Print ISSN: 0177-798X
• Electronic ISSN: 1434-4483
• Publisher: Springer (part of Springer Nature)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 155
• Pages: 1519–1539
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-023-04721-9
• Keywords: Satellite products; climate; weather; water; hydroclimate
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/11391503