Evaluation of Three Long-Term Remotely Sensed Precipitation Estimates for Meteorological Drought Monitoring over China

Remotely sensed precipitation estimates (RSPEs) play an essential role in monitoring drought, especially in ungauged or sparsely gauged areas. In this study, we evaluated the ability of three popular long-term RSPEs (PERSIANN, CHIRPS, and MSWEP) in capturing the meteorological drought variations over the 10 first-level water resource basins of China, based on the standardized precipitation index (SPI). Drought events were identified by run theory, and the drought characteristics (i.e., duration, severity, and intensity) were also evaluated and compared with a gridded in situ observational precipitation dataset (CMA). The results showed that the three RSPEs could generally capture the spatial patterns and trends of the CMA and showed better performance in the wetter basins. MSWEP had the best performance for the categorical skill of POD, followed by CHIRPS and PERSIANN for the four timescales. SPI6 was the optimal timescale for identifying meteorological drought events. There were large skill divergences in the 10 first-level basins for capturing the drought characteristics. CHIRPS can efficiently reproduce the spatial distribution of drought characteristics, with similar metrics of MDS, MDI, and MDP, followed by MSWEP and PERSIANN. Overall, no single product always outperformed the other products in capturing drought characteristics, underscoring the necessity of multiproduct ensemble applications. Our study’s findings may provide useful information for drought monitoring in areas with complex terrain and sparse rain-gauge networks.