First-year evaluation of GPM rainfall over the Netherlands: IMERG Day 1 Final Run (V03D)

The Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission is the successor to the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), which orbited Earth for ~17 years. With Core Observatory launched on 27 February 2014, GPM offers global precipitation estimates between 60ºN and 60ºS at 0.1º times 0.1º resolution every 30 min. Unlike during the TRMM era, the Netherlands is now within the coverage provided by GPM. Here the first year of GPM rainfall retrievals from the 30-min gridded Integrated Multisatellite Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) product Day 1 Final Run (V03D) is assessed. This product is compared against gauge-adjusted radar rainfall maps over the land surface of the Netherlands at 30-min, 24-h, monthly, and yearly scales. These radar rainfall maps are considered to be ground truth. The evaluation of the first year of IMERG operations is done through time series, scatterplots, empirical exceedance probabilities, and various statistical indicators. In general, there is a tendency for IMERG to slightly underestimate (2%) countrywide rainfall depths. Nevertheless, the relative underestimation is small enough to propose IMERG as a reliable source of precipitation data, especially for areas where rain gauge networks or ground-based radars do not offer these types of high-resolution data and availability. The potential of GPM for rainfall estimation in a midlatitude country is confirmed.