Article Evaluation of Three-Hourly TMPA Rainfall Products Using Telemetric Rain Gauge Observations at Lai Nullah Basin in Islamabad, Pakistan Asid Ur Rehman 1,2, Farrukh Chishtie 3,*, Waqas A. Qazi 1, Sajid Ghuffar 1, Imran Shahid 1 and Khunsa Fatima 4 1 Department of Space Science, Institute of Space Technology (IST), Islamabad 44000, Pakistan;
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[email protected]; Tel.: +66-0909-29-1450 Received: date:14 October 2018; Accepted: 11 December 2018; Published: 14 December 2018 Abstract: Flash floods which occur due to heavy rainfall in hilly and semi-hilly areas may prove deleterious when they hit urban centers. The prediction of such localized and heterogeneous phenomena is a challenge due to a scarcity of in-situ rainfall. A possible solution is the utilization of satellite-based precipitation products. The current study evaluates the efficacy of Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA) three-hourly products, i.e., 3B42 near-real-time (3B42RT) and 3B42 research version (3B42V7) at a sub-daily time scale. Various categorical indices have been used to assess the capability of products in the detection of rain/no-rain. Hourly rain rates are assessed by employing the most commonly used statistical measures, such as correlation coefficients (CC), mean bias error (MBE), mean absolute error (MAE), and root-mean-square error (RMSE).