Spatial distribution of precipitation in Tianshan Mountains and its estimation

Using precipitation retrieved from Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission(TRMM) and 31 meteorological stations surrounding the areas in 1998-2008,a series of spatial and temporal distribution of monthly precipitation is constructed for Tianshan Mountains.The series is validated using the crocs-validation method.The Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient is greater than 0.5 and the corresponding correlation coefficient is higher than 0.9.The result illustrates the applicability of using TRMM satellite to monitoring precipitation in northwestern China,especially in mountainous regions with insufficient meteorological stations.The precipitation series can be used to drive distributed hydrological models for water resources studies.