An assessment of a gridded gauge-based precipitation estimates (nClimGrid) with National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Stage IV radar-based precipitation estimates

Abstract:

The nClimGrid contains gridded fields and area averages of daily maximum, minimum, and average temperature (TMAX, TMIN, and TAVG) and daily precipitation amount (PRCP) for the Contiguous United States between January 1, 1951, and the present. The precipitation variable of the nClimGrid is used for calculations of drought indices as well as climate model verification, hydrologic modeling, analyses of the spatial extent of past meteorological events, and regional trends in various measures of temperature and precipitation extremes.

We propose to evaluate the precipitation variable of nClimGrid using National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Stage IV radar-based precipitation estimates. NCEP Stage IV estimates are available at a similar grid resolution to nClimGrid for daily and sub daily temporal resolutions. This provides an opportunity to evaluate climatological variables such as average daily and average monthly precipitation as well as more detailed statistics such as standard deviation and probability of precipitation. Finally given that NCEP Stage IV has sub daily estimates of gridded precipitation we are able to investigate the sub daily structure of nClimGrid such as the diurnal variation or lack thereof due to the interpolation technique.