Assessing 10 Satellite Precipitation Products in Capturing the July 2021 Extreme Heavy Rain in Henan, China

On 20 July 2021, a sudden rainstorm happened in central and northern Henan Province, China, killing at least 302 people. This extreme precipitation event incurred substantial socioeconomic impacts and resulted in serious losses. Accurate monitoring of such rainstorm events is crucial. In this study, qualitative and quantitative methods are used to comprehensively evaluate the abilities of 10 high-resolution satellite precipitation products CMORPH-Raw (Climate Prediction Center morphing technique), CMORPH-RT, PERSIANN-CCS (Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information Using Artificial Neural Networks), GPM IMERG-Early (Integrated Multisatellite Retrievals for Global Precipitation Measurement), GPM IMERG-Late, GSMaP-Now (Global Satellite Mapping of Precipitation), GSMaP-NRT, FY-2F, FY-2G, and FY-2H in capturing this extreme rainstorm event, as well as their performances in monitoring different precipitation intensities. The results show that these satellite precipitation products are able to capture the spatial distributions of the rainstorm (e.g., its location in central and northern Henan), but all products have underestimated the amount of precipitation in the rainstorm center. With the increase in precipitation intensity, the hit rate decreases, the threat score decreases, and the false alarm rate increases. CMORPH-RT is better at capturing the rainstorm than CMORPH-Raw, and it depictes the rainstorm process well; GPM IMERG-Late is more accurate than GPM IMERG-Early; GSMaP-NRT has performed better than GSMaP-Now; and PERSIANN-CCS and FY-2F perform poorly. Among the products, CMORPH-RT performs the best, which has accurately captured the center of the rainstorm, and is also the closest to the station-based observations. In general, the satellite precipitation products that integrate infrared and passive microwave data are found to be better than those that only make use of infrared data. The satellite precipitation retrieval algorithm and the amount of passive microwave data have a relatively greater impact on the accuracy of satellite precipitation products.