Time Series Analysis of Atmospheric Precipitation Characteristics in Western Siberia for 1979–2018 across Different Datasets

Abstract

A comparative statistical analysis of the spatiotemporal variability of atmospheric precipitation characteristics (mean and extreme values) in Western Siberia was performed based on data acquired from meteorological stations, global precipitation datasets such as the project of Asian Precipitation—Highly-Resolved Observational Data Integration Towards Evaluation (APHRODITE) and from Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC), and reanalysis archives, including from National Centers of Environmental Prediction (NCEP-DOE) and the European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ERA5) for the period 1979–2018. The best agreement of the values from the observational data was observed with the values from GPCC. This archive also represented the periodicities in the time series of observational data from meteorological stations, especially in the short-period part of the spectrum. Underestimated values were revealed for the APHRODITE archive, while overestimated ones were found for the NCEP reanalysis data. In comparison with GPCC, the ERA5 dataset reproduced the general variability but with a smaller amplitude (the correlation coefficient was up to 0.9). In general, the median estimates of the precipitation amount derived from the meteorological stations’ data, as well from the reanalysis data, were in better agreement with each other rather than their extreme values. However, their temporal variability can be effectively described by other datasets.

Keywords

• atmospheric precipitation
• time series
• extreme values
• periodicities
• correlation analysis
• spatiotemporal variability