Consistency of satellite-based precipitation products in space and over time compared with gauge observations and snow- hydrological modelling in the Lake Titicaca region

Satgé, Frédéric; Ruelland, Denis; Bonnet, Marie-Paule; Molina, Jorge; Pillco, Ramiro

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-595-2019

Articles | Volume 23, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-595-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-595-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 23, issue 1

Research article

|

01 Feb 2019

Research article |

| 01 Feb 2019

Consistency of satellite-based precipitation products in space and over time compared with gauge observations and snow- hydrological modelling in the Lake Titicaca region

Frédéric Satgé, Denis Ruelland, Marie-Paule Bonnet, Jorge Molina, and Ramiro Pillco

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Final revised paper (published on 01 Feb 2019)
Preprint (discussion started on 13 Sep 2018)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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RC1: 'Review of Satge et al. (2018)', Anonymous Referee #1, 25 Oct 2018
- AC1: 'Answer to comments from referee 1', Frederic Satge, 21 Dec 2018
  - AC3: 'Answer to comments from referee 1', Frederic Satge, 21 Dec 2018
- AC5: 'Revised manuscript version', Frederic Satge, 21 Dec 2018
RC2: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #2, 22 Nov 2018
- AC2: 'Answer to comments from referee 2', Frederic Satge, 21 Dec 2018
- AC4: 'Revised manscript version', Frederic Satge, 21 Dec 2018

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Publish subject to revisions (further review by editor and referees) (30 Dec 2018) by Remko Uijlenhoet

AR by Frederic Satge on behalf of the Authors (03 Jan 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (03 Jan 2019) by Remko Uijlenhoet

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (03 Jan 2019)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Thank you for making the changes which I believe have resulted in a better paper. I have a few more comments.

"It is worth mentioning that other precipitation datasets with coarser resolution (>0.25°) are currently available but we did not use them because (1) the difference between point-gauge and grid-cell-average measurement would introduce inconsistency and because (2) such low resolution datasets are better suited for observation of global scale precipitation patterns rather than the local dynamics studied here."

I disagree with this (newly added) statement. There are numerous situations where a coarse resolution dataset (e.g., JRA-55 with its 0.7° resolution) would provide a much better performance than a high resolution dataset (e.g., IMERG with its 0.1° resolution). Why would it matter to an end-user whether there's a potential discrepancy between point-gauge and grid-cell-average measurements? For most applications all that matters is the accuracy of the dataset.

You should explicitly mention (at least in the introduction and conclusion sections) that reanalyses tend to be a better choice in cold regions/periods. The latter has been known for several decades (see, e.g., Huffman et al., 1995) but is generally not communicated well in most precipitation dataset evaluation studies which can lead to confusion.

Regarding the figures, my suggestion to use perceptually uniform color scales was not followed. Let me give you another reference: https://arxiv.org/abs/1509.03700. In addition, the use of only red and green in color scales is not recommended as many males have red-green color blindness (https://nei.nih.gov/health/color_blindness/facts_about). The resolution of some of the figures is also a bit low (in Figure 7, for example, the lines are very pixelated).

Finally, "Global-scale evaluation of 23 precipitation datasets" should be "Global-scale evaluation of 22 precipitation datasets", and the Beck et al. (2018) reference is missing from the references list.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (04 Jan 2019) by Remko Uijlenhoet

AR by Frederic Satge on behalf of the Authors (11 Jan 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (14 Jan 2019) by Remko Uijlenhoet

Short summary

This paper assesses the potential of satellite precipitation estimates (SPEs) for precipitation measurement and hydrological and snow modelling. A total of 12 SPEs is considered to provide a global overview of available SPE accuracy for users interested in such datasets. Results show that, over poorly monitored regions, SPEs represent a very efficient alternative to traditional precipitation gauges to follow precipitation in time and space and for hydrological and snow modelling.