Comparative Evaluation of CHIRPSv2 and CHIRPSv3 over Northern Cyprus


Gödek Hayal N. P., Zaifoğlu H., Yanmaz A. M.

EMCEI-26 8th Euro-Mediterranean Conference for Environmental Integration, Aveiro, Portekiz, 15 - 18 Temmuz 2026, (Yayınlanmadı)

  • Yayın Türü: Bildiri / Yayınlanmadı
  • Basıldığı Şehir: Aveiro
  • Basıldığı Ülke: Portekiz
  • TED Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

Flood risk assessment, climate, and hydrological analyses require information about ungauged or poorly gauged regions. While datasets derived from remote sensing methods are useful for estimating rainfall, their regional validation is crucial. The Climate Hazards Group Infrared Precipitation with Station data (CHIRPS), which is a combined high-resolution gridded dataset of in-situ gauge and satellite observations, has recently released CHIRPSv3. There is very limited research in the literature comparing the performance of different versions. To the authors’ knowledge, no study has been conducted for the Mediterranean basin, particularly over Northern Cyprus. Therefore, in this study, the performances of CHIRPSv2 and CHIRPSv3 are evaluated for the period 1981-2010 on monthly and seasonal scales by comparing them with 33 in-situ gauge measurements, using statistical metrics including mean bias (MB), mean absolute error (MAE), root mean square error (RMSE), modified index of agreement (MIA), Kling-Gupta efficiency (KGE), and Taylor diagrams. The results show that although both versions tend to overestimate the monthly total precipitation and seasonal precipitation in December-January-February (DJF) and March-April-May (MAM), overestimation in CHIRPSv2 is higher in terms of median MB, which may be attributed to both the increased number of stations underestimating observations and the magnitude of underestimation in CHIRPSv3. On the other hand, CHIRPSv2 shows slightly better performance than CHIRPSv3 in the remaining metrics for monthly total precipitation. While MAE, RMSE, MIA, and KGE results, as well as the Taylor diagram, do not exhibit significant differences between the versions in DJF, the most notable differences are observed in MAM, where CHIRPSv2 performs better. In September-October-November (SON), CHIRPSv3 performs slightly better only in terms of KGE, while neither version is adequately successful in representing precipitation in June-July-August (JJA), as indicated by low correlation and near-zero or negative KGE values. These findings indicate that CHIRPSv3 does not provide a consistent improvement over CHIRPSv2 in estimating monthly total and seasonal precipitation in Northern Cyprus. While CHIRPSv3 reduces biases at most stations, increased biases at certain stations limit improvements in other metrics. Overall, CHIRPSv2 generally demonstrates better performance in Northern Cyprus, and is recommended for use in climate and hydrological analyses.