Evaluation of satellite precipitation products for real-time extreme river flow modeling in data scarce regions

Inadequacy of spatio-temporal hydro-climatic data limits the efficacy of hazard monitoring and disaster risk reduction activities in disaster-prone areas. Various satellite missions are recently providing climate data, but prior evaluation and enhancement of these data are necessary for a reliable application. In this study, we conducted performance evaluation and enhancement of three real-time satellite precipitation products (SPPs) (GSMaP, GPM-IMERG, and PERSIANN) for flood modeling in the Blue Nile basin. The bias correction improved the original SPPs, with the largest improvement being for factors generated from 10 d mean data. Flood event hydrograph indicated satisfactory results of error metrics on the devastating flood event of 2012. Employing reliable physical–based distributed hydrologic models provided longer lead time and high-accuracy flood simulation. Furthermore, the results indicate that integrating available initial observed precipitation data improved the efficiency of SPPs simulation, and hence are applicable in operational flood monitoring.