Articles | Volume 27, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-27-169-2023
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-27-169-2023
Research article
 | 
10 Jan 2023
Research article |  | 10 Jan 2023

SMPD: a soil moisture-based precipitation downscaling method for high-resolution daily satellite precipitation estimation

Kunlong He, Wei Zhao, Luca Brocca, and Pere Quintana-Seguí

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Cited articles

Abdollahipour, A., Ahmadi, H., and Aminnejad, B.: A review of downscaling methods of satellite-based precipitation estimates, Earth. Sci. Inform., 15, 1–20, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12145-021-00669-4, 2021. 
Baez-Villanueva, O. M., Zambrano-Bigiarini, M., Beck, H. E., McNamara, I., Ribbe, L., Nauditt, A., Birkel, C., Verbist, K., Giraldo-Osorio, J. D., and Thinh, N. X.: RF-MEP: A novel Random Forest method for merging gridded precipitation products and ground-based measurements, Remote Sens. Environ., 239, 111606, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2019.111606, 2020. 
Bezak, N., Borrelli, P., and Panagos, P.: Exploring the possible role of satellite-based rainfall data in estimating inter- and intra-annual global rainfall erosivity, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 26, 1907–1924, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-1907-2022, 2022. 
Birtwistle, A. N., Laituri, M., Bledsoe, B., and Friedman, J. M.: Using NDVI to measure precipitation in semi-arid landscapes, J. Arid Environ., 131, 15–24, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaridenv.2016.04.004, 2016. 
Brocca, L., Moramarco, T., Melone, F., and Wagner, W.: A new method for rainfall estimation through soil moisture observations, Geophys. Res. Lett., 40, 853–858, https://doi.org/10.1002/grl.50173, 2013.  
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Short summary
In this study, we developed a soil moisture-based precipitation downscaling (SMPD) method for spatially downscaling the GPM daily precipitation product by exploiting the connection between surface soil moisture and precipitation according to the soil water balance equation. Based on this physical method, the spatial resolution of the daily precipitation product was downscaled to 1 km and the SMPD method shows good potential for the development of the high-resolution precipitation product.
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