TY - JOUR
T1 - A new, long-term daily satellite-based rainfall dataset for operational monitoring in Africa
AU - Maidment, Ross I.
AU - Grimes, David
AU - Black, Emily
AU - Tarnavsky, Elena
AU - Young, Matthew
AU - Greatrex, Helen
AU - Allan, Richard P.
AU - Stein, Thorwald
AU - Nkonde, Edson
AU - Senkunda, Samuel
AU - Alcántara, Edgar Misael Uribe
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2017.
PY - 2017/5/23
Y1 - 2017/5/23
N2 - Rainfall information is essential for many applications in developing countries, and yet, continually updated information at fine temporal and spatial scales is lacking. In Africa, rainfall monitoring is particularly important given the close relationship between climate and livelihoods. To address this information gap, this paper describes two versions (v2.0 and v3.0) of the TAMSAT daily rainfall dataset based on high-resolution thermal-infrared observations, available from 1983 to the present. The datasets are based on the disaggregation of 10-day (v2.0) and 5-day (v3.0) total TAMSAT rainfall estimates to a daily time-step using daily cold cloud duration. This approach provides temporally consistent historic and near-real time daily rainfall information for all of Africa. The estimates have been evaluated using ground-based observations from five countries with contrasting rainfall climates (Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Uganda, and Zambia) and compared to other satellite-based rainfall estimates. The results indicate that both versions of the TAMSAT daily estimates reliably detects rainy days, but have less skill in capturing rainfall amount - results that are comparable to the other datasets.
AB - Rainfall information is essential for many applications in developing countries, and yet, continually updated information at fine temporal and spatial scales is lacking. In Africa, rainfall monitoring is particularly important given the close relationship between climate and livelihoods. To address this information gap, this paper describes two versions (v2.0 and v3.0) of the TAMSAT daily rainfall dataset based on high-resolution thermal-infrared observations, available from 1983 to the present. The datasets are based on the disaggregation of 10-day (v2.0) and 5-day (v3.0) total TAMSAT rainfall estimates to a daily time-step using daily cold cloud duration. This approach provides temporally consistent historic and near-real time daily rainfall information for all of Africa. The estimates have been evaluated using ground-based observations from five countries with contrasting rainfall climates (Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Uganda, and Zambia) and compared to other satellite-based rainfall estimates. The results indicate that both versions of the TAMSAT daily estimates reliably detects rainy days, but have less skill in capturing rainfall amount - results that are comparable to the other datasets.
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U2 - 10.1038/sdata.2017.63
DO - 10.1038/sdata.2017.63
M3 - Article
C2 - 28534868
AN - SCOPUS:85019620735
SN - 2052-4463
VL - 4
JO - Scientific Data
JF - Scientific Data
M1 - 170063
ER -