Adaptability Evaluation of TRMM Satellite Rainfall and Its Application in the Dongjiang River Basin

Global rainfall data is very important for climate change research, and the current rainfall data are mainly from the rain gauge on the ground, ground radar and spaceborne passive radiometer. Rain gauge rainfall represents the point rainfall distribution, which would cause inaccurate result when calculating average rainfall in a region with statistical methods (such as the use of intra-variance method). This study mainly focus on the applicability of TRMM satellite radar rainfall through the comparison between the observed precipitation and the near real-time monitoring TRMM 3B42RT rainfall data in the Dongjiang River Basin in south China, and its performance in hydrological modeling. Results showed that TRMM 3B42RT rainfall data has a high precision and a good correlation with the observed precipitation in the basin. But at point scale, precision of TRMM 3B42RT rainfall data is limited. Besides, streamflow simulated by the observed precipitation has a smaller bias and a higher coefficient of efficiency than that simulated by TRMM 3B42RT rainfall data.