Comparison of rainfall products over Africa

Abstract

There are many rainfall products available, some of them are global and others have been developed specifically for Africa or another region. They are based on different methods and use different sources of data. All these products have different advantages and limitations and they are suitable for different purposes, like climate or drought monitoring. They can be divided in three categories: the gauge-only products, the satellite-based products and the reanalyses products. These different types of products are compared through literature study in order to find their strengths and weaknesses. The performance of each product varies from region to region, the behaviour of a product can be very different over two separate regions. The gauge-only products are dependent on the gauge coverage which is poor in many regions of Africa. The performance of the satellite-based products are influenced by several factors such as the orography, the rainfall regime and the gauge density (for the ones using them). The reanalyses products are outperformed by the other products but can be improved through downscaling.