Abstract:

Precipitation is a critical link in the water circulation process, and it exhibits high spatiotemporal heterogeneity. Traditionally, the quality of precipitation observations was determined by the allocation and density of rain gauge networks; therefore, large areas with missing values frequently occur in the process of monitoring precipitation in remote regions such as mountains, oceans, and deserts, which are difficult to access. This issue restricts the availability of accurate rainfall information across large areas. In recent decades, continuous advances in remote sensing technology using satellites provide new ways to accurately measure global precipitation. This method of collecting data provides great promise for estimating precipitation in inaccessible areas and has been employed at regional and near-global scales, securing its role as an important tool in global hydrometeorological applications. The extensive application of satellite precipitation data has provided valuable data for hydrological simulations, rainfall analyses, and water resource management. Pre-evaluation of satellite precipitation products is the application premise in different regions because the accuracy of satellite precipitation products vary from place to place. Many published papers have demonstrated the usefulness of satellite precipitation products around the world, including China, the United States, India, and Chile. To understand the research situations and popular topics of research on the use of precipitation data from satellites, 752 articles from the core collection of Web of Science database from 1998 to 2020 were used as research objects, and bibliometrics and network analysis methods were used to analyze the pattern of evolution, the network of cooperation, research hotspots, and the continued advancement of remote sensing technology. The results of this analysis show that the number of published papers and citations increased from 1998 to 2020, and the number of cited papers increased since 2015 by nearly 2000 times a year. The United States, China and Germany are the major publishing countries in the world, with the United States and China accounting for 76.2% of the total volume published. The Chinese Academy of Sciences is the largest publishing institution in the world, accounting for 11.6% of the total volume published from 1998 to 2000. The main research direction and content cover multi-spatial and temporal evaluations, extreme precipitation events, and evaluation of large-scale drought based on precipitation data from satellites covering complex terrain. For example, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and La Plata Basin are areas where this type of data collection can provide information where none exists. In addition, the simulation of hydrological processes based on these data, the simulation of climate based on artificial intelligence methods, meteorological forecasts, and long-term predictions are promising areas for future research in this field.

Key words: satellite precipitation product, bibliometrics, network analysis, evolution process, frontier progress