Applicability of the CHIRPS Precipitation Product in the Regional Climatology of Southeast Europe

Precipitation is a key component of the global water cycle and is an essential climate variable of key importance for a wide range of climatological applications and other branches of environmental science. Consistent and accurate precipitation estimates are also of relevant importance for regions like Southeast Europe where agricultural crop production is the main economical sector. Nowadays, satellite-based precipitation estimates are increasingly utilized in various geophysical applications including regional climatology. The Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Stations (CHIRPS) is a quasi-global product that, due to its high spatial and temporal resolution, long-term temporal coverage, and relatively low latency, has the potential to become a multi-purpose precipitation dataset. In the present study, the performance of the CHIRPS data was evaluated at daily and monthly time scales over Southeast Europe for the whole recent time span of the product 1981–2020. The measurements-based gridded daily database E-OBS is used as a reference. Moreover, core climate indices of the Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices (ETCCDI), derived from the CHIRPS precipitation are superimposed to their counterparts based on E-OBS in order to check the CHIRP’s ability to reproduce the precipitation extremes. Alongside the other findings, the study reveals spatially dominating wet bias of the multiyear means of the monthly precipitation sums.