Calibration of TRMM rainfall climatology over Sinai Peninsula during 1998–2012

a b s t r a c t The short-term rainfall climatology regime over Sinai Peninsula is obtained from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) data for the period 1998–2012. The TRMM rainfall amounts are calibrated with respect to the rain-gauge data recorded at 10 stations across Sinai Peninsula. Day-to-day rainfall comparisons show that the TRMM rainfall trends are very similar to the observed data trends, even if a general overestimation in the satellite products must be highlighted. Besides, especially during the wet season, some of the TRMM algorithm runs tend to underestimate the retrieved rainfalls. The TRMM rainfall data also closely follow the observed annual cycle on a monthly scale. The correlation coefficient for rainfall between the TRMM and the rain-gauge data is about 0.90, with a 99% level of significance on the monthly scale. The spatio-temporal distributions of rainfall over Sinai Peninsula are analyzed. Besides the four conventional seasons, this analysis consider the wet (November–April) and dry (June–September) seasons, based on the rainfall amounts recorded. Spring is the highest and winter is the second highest rainfall-occurring season, resulting in large amounts of rainfall during the wet season over calibration, the TRMM-measured rainfall is almost 100% of the observed data, thereby confirming that TRMM data may be used in a variety of water-related applications in Sinai Peninsula.