Evaluation of Monthly Precipitation Data from Three Gridded Climate Data Products over Nigeria

The use of satellite and reanalysis weather product is gaining traction in the scientific community especially in developing worlds where in situ data are sparse. Tropical locations have dynamic and widely variable climate which needs to be continuously monitored. The efficiency of these products in capturing the climatic dynamics of these regions is important. The aim of this research is to investigate the performance of three gridded precipitation products (the University of Delaware (UDEL), NOAA’s precipitation reconstruction over land (NOAA), and Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC)) across 21 locations within tropical Nigeria. The performance of the gridded data was assessed with gauge data from the Nigerian Meteorological Services (NIMET) over a period of 51 years (1960–2010). Correlation values in the range 0.68–0.92, 0.69–0.92 and 0.30–0.93 were obtained for GPCC, NOAA, and UDEL respectively in all stations. The three products have poor performance in the northern stations of the country during the dry season but good performance in all stations during the wet season. The GPCC gridded product was found to have the best performance over the region.