To investigate the application of global precipitation data, such as the data from satellite remote sensing and atmospheric reanalysis, in data-scarce small-scale basins, a case study was conducted in the Yangyi Reservoir Basin in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province. The study utilized a high-resolution global precipitation product, i.e., multi-source weighted-ensemble precipitation(MSWEP) to derive long term precipitation processes and estimate design storms for the data scarce small basin. The results indicate that, at daily, monthly, and annual time scales, although MSWEP exhibits certain errors, it generally demonstrates strong capability in characterizing precipitation processes in the Yangyi Reservoir Basin from 1979 to 2020. For design storms, MSWEP tends to slightly underestimate observed precipitation, and the annual maximum 1d, 24h, and 3d design storm values for the Yangyi Reservoir Basin derived from MSWEP are generally lower than those obtained from station based precipitation data. However, the relative differences of the results between the two methods remain within 18%. Particularly, for the annual maximum 1d and 24h design storm values with a return period exceeding 50 a, the relative differences are mostly within 6%. For the Yangyi Reservoir Basin, the reliability of design storm estimates derived from MSWEP is superior to that obtained from statistical parameter atlas.