Advanced Concepts on Remote Sensing of Precipitation at Multiple Scales

what: 50 participants from precipitation research community met to develop a list of research priorities and recommendations in the field of remote sensing of precipitation whEn: 15–17 March 2010 whErE: University of California, Irvine Overview Of recOmmendatiOns (i) Uncertainty of merged products and multisensor observations warrants a great deal of research. Quantification of uncertainties and their propagation into combined products is vital for future development. (ii) Future improvements in satellite-based precipitation retrieval algorithms will rely on more indepth research on error properties in different climate regions, storm regimes, surface conditions, seasons, and altitudes. Given such information, precipitation algorithms for retrieval, downscaling, and data fusion can be optimized for different situations. (iii) Based on the currently available data, global multichannel precipitation estimates with spatial and temporal resolutions of 4 km and 30 min can be considered as the target dataset that can be achieved in the near future. At high resolutions, however, achieving desirable accuracy is the main challenge. Extensive development and validation efforts are required to make such a dataset available to the community for research and applications. (iv) Development of metrics for validation and uncertainty analysis are of great importance. Various metrics with emphasis on different aspects of performance are required so that users can decide which product fits their purposes/applications best. Furthermore, developing diagnostic statistics (shifting and rotation) will help to capture the systematic deficiency inherent in precipitation retrieval algorithms. affiLiatiOns : SorooShian, aghaKouchaK, imam—University of California, Irvine, Irvine, California; arKin—University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland; EylandEr—U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center, Hanover, New Hampshire; foufoula-gEorgiou—University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota; harmon—Army Research Laboratory, Durham, North Carolina; hEndricKx—New Mexico Tech, Socorro, New Mexico; KuligowSKi—NOAA/NESDIS/ STAR, Camp Springs, Maryland; SKahill—U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center, Vicksburg, Mississippi; SKofronicK-JacKSon—NASA GSFC, Greenbelt, Maryland cOrresPOndinG aUtHOr: Soroosh Sorooshian, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697 E-mail: [email protected]