Evaluation of Satellite-Based Air Temperature Estimates at Eight Diverse Sites in Africa

High resolution satellite and reanalysis-based air temperature estimates have huge potential to complement the sparse networks of measurements from ground stations in Africa. The recently released Climate Hazards Center Infrared Temperature with Stations (CHIRTS-daily) dataset provides daily minimum maximum on a near-global scale 1983 2016. This study assesses performance CHIRTS-daily comparison eight diverse locations across Africa 2016, benchmarked against ERA5 ERA5-Land reanalysis understand its provide localized information. Compared ERA5-Land, has higher correlation lower bias daily, annual mean extreme temperature. It also exhibits significant trends temperature, comparable those station data. temperatures generally correlation, but larger than ERA5-Land. However, results indicate that biases may be largely systematic could potentially corrected for. Overall, is highly promising as it outperforms many areas, good small, set sites Further studies specific geographic areas help support these findings.