Evaluation of TRMM satellite dataset for monitoring meteorological drought in northeastern Brazil
Reginaldo Moura Brasil Neto, Celso Augusto Guimarães Santos, Richarde Marques da Silva, Carlos Antônio Costa dos Santos
Abstract
Although droughts can inflict extreme damage on populations, few studies have characterized drought events in arid and semiarid regions around the globe due to the lack of reliable data. Therefore, precipitation estimates from remote sensing satellites have been increasingly used. In this study, the performance of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite rainfall estimates in monitoring the spatiotemporal patterns of drought at multiple time scales over Paraíba state is evaluated. The drought events are characterized by their quantity, duration, severity, intensity, frequency, and percentage of the area affected, and analyses are performed both for individual points and for four mesoregions at eight different time scales. The results indicate that short-term drought events occur more frequently but are less long-lasting and severe than long-term drought events. On the other hand, relevant changes in the average intensity of events cannot be identified among the time scales.