Manuel Rios Gaona is Colombian with a Civil Engineer with an MSc in Hydrology, and a PhD in Hydrometeorology from Wageningen University. His research has focused on (large data sets of) rainfall estimates from remote sensing technologies such as meteorological radar and satellite, and (especially from) commercial microwave link networks (CMLs).

Most of his work has focused on statistical analyses to quantify and validate not only sources of uncertainty in rainfall retrievals but also their spatial and temporal distribution, mainly from CMLs, and satellite gridded products (e.g., IMERG - Integrated MultisatellitE Retrievals for GPM – Global Precipitation Measurement mission).

Manuel’s participation in DOWN2EARTH revolves around the development of a new regional stochastic rainfall model, capturing the spatiotemporal distribution of individual rainstorms in the Horn of Africa drylands, along with their essential climatological drivers.