ABSTRACT
Precipitation is one of the most important factors that affect the global water and energy balance (Kidd and Huffman, 2011). Researchers can hardly conduct better simulations of the water cycle over regions without accurate precipitation inputs (Xue et al., 2013). Traditionally, there are three ways to measure precipitation, that is, rain gauges, weather radars, and satellite-based sensors. The rain gauge is a conventional way of providing the most straightforward observations of site-based surface precipitation. However, gauge networks are sparse over most of continents and few gauges are located over the ocean (Kidd and Huffman, 2011; Mishra and Coulibaly, 2009). The weather radar can monitor precipitation with relatively higher temporal and spatial resolutions, but is often subject to low data quality in complex terrain mostly due to signal blockage, attenuation by rain, and vertical variability of reflectivity (Dinku et al., 2002; Tian and Peters-Lidard, 2010). Currently, the only
1.1 Introduction ......................................................................................................3 1.2 GPM Core Observatory and Constellation .......................................................5
