Comparing Precipitation from PERSIANN and TRMM during Typhoons

Extreme weather events have associated economic and human costs due to the inability to predict in advance and the devastation that accompanies these events. A typhoon is an extreme weather event that causes destruction for many Asian-Pacific countries in the Pacific Ocean. Typhoons are known for causing heavy precipitation, very strong winds, and storm surges. These affects then lead to flooding, heavy run-off, and landslides, which often result in water contamination, heavy sedimentation, and building collapse. With climate change, the occurrence, strength, and duration of typhoons are changing and it is generally acknowledged that typhoons are becoming stronger. The need to better understand these typhoon events in order to predict the outcomes that many Asia-Pacific countries will face is of utmost importance. Our approach to better understand typhoons and the precipitation associated with them is to estimate the precipitation during several typhoon events. We compared daily precipitation estimates during twenty-nine typhoon events in the Western North Pacific from 2000 to 2018 using two widely used and understood datasets, NASA’s Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Multi-Satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA) and Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information using Artificial Neural Networks–Climate Data Record (PERSIANN-CDR). Bias and root mean square error varied based on typhoon and spatial extent (five different) are used for analysis. While variation existed between PERSIANN and TRMM TMPA estimates, TRMM TMPA estimated higher precipitation in all but three of the typhoons studied in this work.