Dr. Xinxuan Zhang

University of Connecticut, USA

No. 303, Keyan Building, IAP

10:00am, July 31, 2017 

This research contributes to the improvement of high resolution satellite applications over mountainous topography. Such mountainous regions are usually covered by sparse networks of in-situ observations while quantitative precipitation estimation from satellite sensors exhibits strong underestimation of heavy orographically enhanced storm events. To address this issue, our research applies a satellite error correction technique based solely on high-resolution numerical weather simulations.

The error correction technique has been applied on six major mountain ranges all over the world and brings significant improvements on the satellite precipitation products comparing with ground observations(Zhang et al. 2013*1, Zhang et al. 2016*2). So far two different satellite precipitation products, NOAA Climate Prediction Center morphing technique (CMORPH) product and the Global Satellite Mapping of Precipitation (GSMaP) product, are considered. Future study will include the newly released IMERG products as well. Hydrological model is employed to evaluate satellite precipitation error propagation in runoff simulations.