An evaluation of IMERG and ERA5 quantitative precipitation estimates over the Southern Ocean using shipborne observations

• Published in: Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology
• Main Authors: Montoya Duque, E, Huang, Y, May, P, Siems, S
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: American Meteorological Society 2023
• Subjects: Southern Ocean
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11343/337198

Recent voyages of the Australian RV Investigator across the remote Southern Ocean have provided unprecedented observations of precipitation made with both an OceanRAIN maritime disdrometer and a dual-polarization C-band weather radar (OceanPOL). This present study employs these observations to evaluate the Global Precipitation Mission (GPM) Integrated MultisatellitE Retrievals (IMERG) and the ECMWF reanalysis (ERA5) precipitation products. Working at a resolution of 60 minutes and 0.25° (~25 km), light rain and drizzle are most frequently observed across the region. The IMERG product overestimated precipitation intensity when evaluated against the OceanRAIN but captured the frequency of occurrence well. Looking at the synoptic/process scale, IMERG was found to be the least accurate (overestimated intensity) under warm frontal and high latitude cyclone conditions, where multi-layer clouds were commonly present. Under post-frontal conditions, IMERG underestimates the precipitation frequency. In comparison, ERA5’s skill was more consistent across various synoptic conditions, except for high-pressure conditions where the precipitation frequency (intensity) was highly overestimated (underestimated). Using the OceanPOL radar, an area-to-area analysis (fractional skill score) finds that ERA5 has greater skill than the IMERG. There is little agreement in the phase classification between the OceanRAIN disdrometer, IMERG, and ERA5. The comparisons are complicated by the various assumptions for phase classification in the different datasets.