Performance Assessment of Satellite Rainfall Estimates Products to Describe Recent Variability and Trends of Rainfall along the Egyptian Mediterranean Coast

Understanding long-term changes in precipitation characteristics is the best way to study the vulnerability of a region to climate change.  While, observed rain data obtained from meteorological stations are the most accurate data, their poor spatiotemporal distribution is an obstacle to long-term rain studies. Satellite rainfall data products are a suitable alternative to use, but sometimes this data is inaccurate and does not represent reality. Hence, the performance of satellite data for the study area must be evaluated before relying on it to study the rainfall characteristics of the area. Science the Egyptian Mediterranean coast (EMC) is considered one of the highly vulnerable regions to climate change impacts, this study aims to evaluate the performance of three satellite rainfall data products in comparison with the ground stations observed data along the EMC during the period 2007-2021. In addition, to analyzing the observed data to investigate the recent daily, monthly, and annual changes in precipitation to spotlight the intensity and frequency of extreme events. Evaluating the performance of satellite rainfall data products showed that none of them are suitable for providing a complete picture of rainfall patterns in the study area. This performance limitation may be due to the measurement time discrepancy between ground-based and satellite rainfall products. On the other hand, the results of analyzing observed rain data showed a considerable increase in annual rainfall across the EMC with a positive trend of (22.33mm/year), also a positive trend of rainy days’ number of (3.47 days/year), another notable result was that EMC has an annual average rainy day of 27 days, among those rainy days, only 2.3 days are characterized by heavy and extreme rain.