The Development of a Combined Satellite-Based Precipitation Dataset across Bolivia from 2000 to 2015

2021 
This study proposes the use of satellite-based precipitation (SBP) products in combination with local rain gauges in Bolivia. Using this approach, the country was divided into three major hydrographic basins: the Altiplano, La Plata, and Amazon. The selected SBP products were Global Satellite Mapping of Precipitation (GSMaP) and Climate Hazards Group Infrared Precipitations with Stations (CHIRPS). The correlation coefficients of SBP were found to be from 0.94 to 0.98 at monthly temporal scale. The applied methodology iterates correction factors, taking advantage of surface measurements from the national rain gauge network; five iterations showed stability in the convergence. Once the improved SBP product was obtained, validation was performed by reducing ten percent the number of rain gauges randomly. After applying the correction factors, the combined products improved their correlation coefficient values by up to 0.99. The validation of the methodology showed that with a combination of products using 90% of the rain gauges, correlation coefficients ranged from 0.98 to 0.99. Among the three basins, the Amazon basin presented the poorest results; this fact may be related to low rain gauge density compared to the other two basins. The validation approach shows that the methodology has an acceptable performance. The database generated in this study, now open to the public, is ready to be used for different hydrological applications such as precipitation time-series analysis, water balance, and water assessment at the sub-basin scale within Bolivia.
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