The relative effect of climate change and El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is essential not only for understanding the hydrological mechanism over Jiangxi province in China but also for local water resources management as well as flood control. This study quantitatively researched in-depth information on climate change in Jiangxi using the up-to-date “ground truth” precipitation and temperature data, the Asian Precipitation Highly Resolved Observational Data Integration Towards Evaluation of Water Resources (APHRODITE, 1961–2015, 0.25°) data; analyzed the connections between ENSO and climate factors (including precipitation and temperature); and discussed the relationships between the ENSO and climate change. The main findings of this study were (1) during the period of 1961–2015, annual precipitation and temperature generally increased at a rate of 2.68 mm/year and 0.16 °C/10a, respectively; (2) the precipitation temporal trends have significant spatial differences. For example, the high precipitation increasing rates occurred in northern Jiangxi province in summer, while the large decreasing rates happened in most regions of Jiangxi province in spring; (3) an abrupt temperature change was detected around 1984, with general decreasing trends and increasing trends in 1961–1984 and 1984–2015, respectively; (4) ENSO had significant impacts on precipitation changes over Jiangxi province, for example; the El Niño events, beginning in April and May, were likely to enlarge the amounts of precipitation in the following summer, and the El Niño events beginning in October were likely to enlarge the precipitation amounts in the following spring and summer; and (5) the El Niño events, starting in the second half of the year, were likely to raise the temperature in the winter and the following spring. These findings would provide valuable information for better understanding the climate change issues over Jiangxi province.

Abstract The Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for Global Precipitation Measurement (IMERG) produces the latest generation of satellite precipitation estimates and has been widely used since its release in 2014. IMERG V06 provides global rainfall and snowfall data beginning from 2000. This study comprehensively analyzes the quality of the IMERG product at daily and hourly scales in China from 2000 to 2018 with special attention paid to snowfall estimates. The performance of IMERG is compared with nine satellite and reanalysis products (TRMM 3B42, CMORPH, PERSIANN-CDR, GSMaP, CHIRPS, SM2RAIN, ERA5, ERA-Interim, and MERRA2). Results show that the IMERG product outperforms other datasets, except the Global Satellite Mapping of Precipitation (GSMaP), which uses daily-scale station data to adjust satellite precipitation estimates. The monthly-scale station data adjustment used by IMERG naturally has a limited impact on estimates of precipitation occurrence and intensity at the daily and hourly time scales. The quality of IMERG has improved over time, attributed to the increasing number of passive microwave samples. SM2RAIN, ERA5, and MERRA2 also exhibit increasing accuracy with time that may cause variable performance in climatological studies. Even relying on monthly station data adjustments, IMERG shows good performance in both accuracy metrics at hourly time scales and the representation of diurnal cycles. In contrast, although ERA5 is acceptable at the daily scale, it degrades at the hourly scale due to the limitation in reproducing the peak time, magnitude and variation of diurnal cycles. IMERG underestimates snowfall compared with gauge and reanalysis data. The triple collocation analysis suggests that IMERG snowfall is worse than reanalysis and gauge data, which partly results in the degraded quality of IMERG in cold climates. This study demonstrates new findings on the uncertainties of various precipitation products and identifies potential directions for algorithm improvement. The results of this study will be useful for both developers and users of satellite rainfall products.