Geospatial blending to improve spatial mapping of precipitation with high spatial resolution by merging satellite-based and ground-based data

Estimating accurate spatial distribution of precipitation is important for understanding the hydrologic cycle and various hydro-environmental applications. Satellite-based precipitation data have been widely used to measure the spatial distribution of precipitation over large extents, but an improvement in accuracy is still needed. In this study, three different merging techniques (Conditional Merging, Geographical Differential Analysis and Geographical Ratio Analysis) were used to merge precipitation estimations from Communication, Ocean and Meteorological Satellite (COMS) Rainfall Intensity data and ground-based measurements. Merged products were evaluated with varying rain-gauge network densities and accumulation times. The results confirmed that accuracy of detecting quantitative rainfall was improved as the accumulation time and network density increased. Also, the impact of spatial heterogeneity of precipitation on the merged estimates was investigated. Our merging techniques reproduced accurate spatial distribution of rainfall by adopting the advantages of both gauge and COMS estimates. The efficacy of the merging techniques was particularly pronounced when the spatial heterogeneity of hourly rainfall, quantified by variance of rainfall, was greater than 10mm(2)/accumulation time(2). Among the techniques analysed, Conditional Merging performed the best, especially when the gauge density was low. This study demonstrates the utility of the COMS Rainfall Intensity product, which has a shorter latency time (1h) and higher spatio-temporal resolution (hourly, 4km by 4km) than other widely used satellite precipitation products in estimating precipitation using merging techniques with ground-based point measurements. The outcome has important implications for various hydrologic modelling approaches, especially for producing near real-time products. Copyright (c) 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.