GPCP Version 2.3 Combined Precipitation Data Set

Brief Description: Global Precipitation Climatology Project monthly precipitation dataset from 1979-present combines observations and satellite precipitation data into 2.5°x2.5° global grids. Temporal Coverage: Monthly values 1979/01 through Apr 2022 (some months are interim). Long term monthly means, derived from years 1981 - 2010. Spatial Coverage: 2.5 degree latitude x 2.5 degree longitude global grid (144x72) 88.75N - 88.75S, 1.25E - 358.75E

Latest available data: Click to Enlarge

Levels:

• N/A

Update Schedule:

• Monthly

Download/Plot Data: (FTP Access)

Variable	Statistic	Level	Download File	Create Plot/Subset
Precipitation	Monthly Mean	' '	precip.mon.mean.nc
Precipitation	Monthly Error Estimate	' '	precip.mon.mean.error.nc
Precipitation	Monthly LTM (1981-2010)	' '	precip.mon.ltm.nc

Other Plotting/Analysis Tools for this dataset:

• Monthly Composites

Usage Restrictions:

• None

Detailed Description:

• The GPCP Monthly product provides a consistent analysis of global precipitation from an integration of various satellite data sets over land and ocean and a gauge analysis over land. Data from rain gauge stations, satellites, and sounding observations have been merged to estimate monthly rainfall on a 2.5-degree global grid from 1979 to the present. The careful combination of satellite-based rainfall estimates provides the most complete analysis of rainfall available to date over the global oceans, and adds necessary spatial detail to the rainfall analyses over land. In addition to the combination of these data sets, estimates of the uncertainties in the rainfall analysis are provided as a part of the GPCP products.
• Note that some data at the end of the dataset may be interim. There is a netcdf attribute that has the first month of the interim data.

  Additional information is available from U of Maryland at http://eagle1.umd.edu/GPCP_ICDR/.

  Please note: If you acquire GPCP data products from PSL, we ask that you acknowledge us in your use of the data. This may be done by including text such as GPCP data provided by the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSL, Boulder, Colorado, USA, from their Web site at / in any documents or publications using these data. We would also appreciate receiving a copy of the relevant publications. This will help PSL to justify keeping the GPCP data set freely available online in the future. Thank you!

  Please see the documention on how to cite the dataset.

Caveats:

• See detailed description about interim data

Related File Naming & Structure Information:

File Names:

• precip.mon.statistic.nc   (In directory: /Datasets/gpcp/)

OPeNDAP File Names:

• /thredds/dodsC/Datasets/gpcp/precip.mon.statistic.nc   

Dataset Format and Size:

• PSL standard NetCDF 13 Mbyte file for each monthly file.
• PSL standard NetCDF .5 Mbyte file for the long term mean file.

Missing Data:

• Missing data is flagged with a value of -9.96921e+36f.

Citation:

• Please note: If you acquire GPCP Precipitation data products from PSL, we ask that you acknowledge us in your use of the data. This may be done by including text such as GPCP Precipitation data provided by the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSL, Boulder, Colorado, USA, from their Web site at / in any documents or publications using these data. We would also appreciate receiving a copy of the relevant publications. This will help PSL to justify keeping the GPCP Precipitation data set freely available online in the future. Thank you!
• For dataset: Adler, R.F., G.J. Huffman, A. Chang, R. Ferraro, P. Xie, J. Janowiak, B. Rudolf, U. Schneider, S. Curtis, D. Bolvin, A. Gruber, J. Susskind, and P. Arkin, 2003: The Version 2 Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) Monthly Precipitation Analysis (1979-Present). J. Hydrometeor., 4,1147-1167.

References:

• Adler, R. F., G. J. Huffman, A. Chang, R. Ferraro, P. Xie, J. Janowiak, B. Rudolf, U. Schneider, S. Curtis, D. Bolvin, A. Gruber, J. Susskind, P. Arkin, and E. Nelkin, 2003: The version 2 Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) monthly precipitation analysis (1979-present). J. Hydrometeor, 4(6), 1147-1167. Land + Ocean
• Adler, R. F., G. Gu, and G. Huffman, 2012. Estimating Climatological Bias Errors for the Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP). Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, 51, 84-99.
• Adler et al., 2016. An Update (Version 2.3) of the GPCP Monthly Analysis. (in Preparation). Huffman, G.J., R.F. Adler, P. Arkin, A. Chang, R. Ferraro, A. Gruber, J. Janowiak, A. McNab, B. Rudolf, U. Schneider, 1997: The Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) Combined Precipitation Dataset. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 78(1), 5-20.
• Huffman, G. J., R. F. Adler, D. T. Bolvin, and G. Gu (2009): Improving the global precipitation record: GPCP Version 2.1, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L17808, doi:10.1029/2009GL040000 Schneider, Udo; Becker, Andreas; Finger, Peter; Meyer-Christoffer, Anja; Rudolf, Bruno; Ziese, Markus (2015a): GPCC Full Data Reanalysis Version 7.0 at 0.5°: Monthly Land-Surface Precipitation from Rain-Gauges built on GTS-based and Historic Data. DOI: 10.5676/DWD_GPCC/FD_M_V7_050.
• Schneider, Udo; Becker, Andreas; Finger, Peter; Meyer-Christoffer, Anja; Rudolf, Bruno; Ziese, Markus (2015b): GPCC Monitoring Product: Near Real-Time Monthly Land-Surface Precipitation from Rain-Gauges based on SYNOP and CLIMAT data. DOI: 10.5676/DWD_GPCC/MP_M_V5_100

Original Source:

• The NCEI CDR webpage is where you can get links to the metadata and download it..
• U of Maryland has made a data doc page with a desciption and a recent plot.
• The data curator is
  
  Dr. Jian-Jian Wang,
  ESSIC, University of Maryland College Park,
  College Park, MD 20742 USA,
  Phone: +1 301-405-4887 and the websource is http://eagle1.umd.edu/GPCP_ICDR/.

Contact:

• Physical Sciences Laboratory: Data Management
  NOAA/ESRL/PSL
  325 Broadway
  Boulder, CO 80305-3328
  psl.data@noaa.gov