Validation of MW-IR satellite precipitation products using Polish ground rainfall observations - EUMETSAT H-SAF activities

Operational hydrology requires actual and detailed information about water cycle in atmosphere for proper modelling of hydrological processes. EUMETSAT Satellite Application Facility in Support to Operational Hydrology and Water Management (H-SAF), which started development phase in September 2005, aims at derivation of satellite products useful for operational hydrological models. Products of H-SAF concern: precipitation, soil moisture and snow cover parameters. The precipitation retrieval methods developed in the frame of H-SAF project make use of geostationary and polar satellite data with different instruments as AMSU-MHS, SSM/I- SSMIS and SEVIRI. The first versions of H-SAF satellite precipitation estimates are already available for cooperating teams for detailed validation before release of operational products. This paper presents the preliminary validation results obtained for high resolution precipitation products derived from satellite MW/(AMSU, SSM/I) and IR/(SEVIRI) data. The quality of the rain rate and accumulated precipitation estimates were analyzed for selected meteorological situations that referred to convection and stratiform rainfalls. Data from lightning detection system were used for recognition of convective situations. The satellite precipitation products were compared with rainfall data obtained from radar and automatic rain gauges networks providing data with temporal resolution of 10 minutes. Such short aggregation time makes the data useful for validation of satellite derived rain rate products. Additionally, GIS techniques were applied in order to analyze difference between the products in spatial distribution of rainfall.