TY - JOUR
T1 - A principal component analysis approach to assess CHIRPS precipitation dataset for the study of climate variability of the La Plata Basin, Southern South America
AU - Cerón, Wilmar Loaiza
AU - Molina-Carpio, Jorge
AU - Ayes Rivera, Irma
AU - Andreoli, Rita Valeria
AU - Kayano, Mary Toshie
AU - Canchala, Teresita
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, Springer Nature B.V.
PY - 2020/8/1
Y1 - 2020/8/1
N2 - This article assesses the consistency of the satellite precipitation estimate CHIRPS v.2 to describe the spatiotemporal rainfall variability in the La Plata Basin (LPB), the second largest hydrographic basin in South America, by (a) pixel-to-point comparison of CHIRPS data with 167 observed monthly precipitation time series using three pairwise metrics (coefficient of correlation, bias and root mean square error) and (b) principal component analysis (PCA) to evaluate the large-scale coherence between CHIRPS and rain gauge data. The pairwise metrics indicate that CHIRPS better represents the rainfall in the coastal, northeastern and southeastern parts of the basin than in the Andean region to the west. The PCA shows that CHIRPS describes most of the observed rainfall variability in the LPB, but contains more variability, especially during December–February and March–May seasons. The two major modes observed are highly correlated spatially (empirical orthogonal functions—EOFs) and temporally (principal components—PCs) with the corresponding CHIRPS modes. The PCA allows the determination of the main rainfall variability modes and their possible relations with climate variability modes. Besides, the analyses of the precipitation anomaly modes show that the El Niño Southern Oscillation explains the first EOF modes of datasets. The PCA provides an alternative and effective means of assessing the consistency of CHIRPS data in representing spatial and temporal rainfall variability in the LPB.
AB - This article assesses the consistency of the satellite precipitation estimate CHIRPS v.2 to describe the spatiotemporal rainfall variability in the La Plata Basin (LPB), the second largest hydrographic basin in South America, by (a) pixel-to-point comparison of CHIRPS data with 167 observed monthly precipitation time series using three pairwise metrics (coefficient of correlation, bias and root mean square error) and (b) principal component analysis (PCA) to evaluate the large-scale coherence between CHIRPS and rain gauge data. The pairwise metrics indicate that CHIRPS better represents the rainfall in the coastal, northeastern and southeastern parts of the basin than in the Andean region to the west. The PCA shows that CHIRPS describes most of the observed rainfall variability in the LPB, but contains more variability, especially during December–February and March–May seasons. The two major modes observed are highly correlated spatially (empirical orthogonal functions—EOFs) and temporally (principal components—PCs) with the corresponding CHIRPS modes. The PCA allows the determination of the main rainfall variability modes and their possible relations with climate variability modes. Besides, the analyses of the precipitation anomaly modes show that the El Niño Southern Oscillation explains the first EOF modes of datasets. The PCA provides an alternative and effective means of assessing the consistency of CHIRPS data in representing spatial and temporal rainfall variability in the LPB.
KW - CHIRPS
KW - La Plata Basin
KW - Performance metrics
KW - Principal component analysis
KW - Satellite precipitation estimate
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85084419647&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s11069-020-04011-x
DO - 10.1007/s11069-020-04011-x
M3 - Artículo
AN - SCOPUS:85084419647
SN - 0921-030X
VL - 103
SP - 767
EP - 783
JO - Natural Hazards
JF - Natural Hazards
IS - 1
ER -