Performance of GPCP Daily Products Over Oceans: Evaluation Using Passive Aquatic Listeners

Passive Aquatic Listeners (PALs) have been increasingly deployed to collect minute-scale surface oceanic rainfall and wind information, with a sampling area similar to the spaceborne sensor footprints. This provides an unprecedented opportunity to validate satellite precipitation products over oceans. This study evaluates the Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) daily products, including the widely used GPCP v1.3 and the newly released GPCP v3.2, over oceans using 58 PALs as references. The study shows that the GPCP performance depends on time scale, region, and rainfall intensity. The two versions of GPCP perform similarly at multi-year and monthly scales, while GPCP v3.2 shows substantial improvements in representing rain occurrence and rain intensity at daily scale. The results also highlight the challenge of precipitation measurement over certain regions such as the tropical Southeastern Pacific and extratropical North Pacific, where both versions of the GPCP products perform similarly but exhibit noticeable differences compared to PAL observations.

Automated summary

Passive Aquatic Listeners (PALs) are increasingly used to collect minute-scale surface oceanic rainfall and wind information, offering an unprecedented opportunity to validate satellite precipitation products. This study evaluates the performance of the Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) daily products, including GPCP v1.3 and GPCP v3.2, over oceans using 58 PALs as references. The results show that GPCP performance varies depending on time scale, region, and rainfall intensity, with GPCP v3.2 exhibiting substantial improvements at the daily scale.