Data Access

Document Description

This document describes the file naming conventions that will be used to name data products produced by the Precipitation Processing System (PPS) for the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Mission. 

The Evolution of NASA Precipitation Data
NASA’s global precipitation data and data processing systems have come a long way from the launch of TRMM in 1997 to the ongoing GPM mission. Just before midnight Eastern Daylight Time on June 15, 2015, a fireball appeared over central Africa, streaked across Madagascar, and tracked across the uninhabited Southern Indian Ocean. This was the fiery end of the joint NASA/Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM). TRMM’s homecoming after more than 17 years in orbit also marked the end of the first major satellite mission specifically designed to gather...

PPS Network Instability

Presently, PPS web services are experiencing intermittent unavailability and/or slow response times. PPS is aware of this issue and our System Programmers are working diligently to correct these issues. The current anomaly affects our arthurhou server which include the PPS Public site http://pps.gsfc.nasa.gov/ , FTP services, STORM: https://storm.pps.eosdis.nasa.gov/ and THOR (THOR online) , etc. We hope to have all these services restored to normal as soon as possible and will keep you informed as the situation changes. We regret any inconvenience that this may cause and kindly appreciate

PPS Data Outage

Effective about 18 UTC July 21 the GPM MOC stopped sending data to the PPS. This was not a satellite or instrument issue. The problem appeared to be a network connection issue at the Emergency MOC which is currently receiving data as part of a monthly test of the backup facility. Effective 21:41 UTC the data flow from the MOC to PPS resumed. Apparently there was a major network issue on that part of the network. It has now been fixed and MOC is sending data again.

Delay in Some GMI and Combined

Starting at 16:33 UTC July 6 a filled log directory led to sh commands failing on redirecting logs to be created in that directory. A typo in the cleanup routine failed to clean our all the files after the normal 4 days. As a result they have been accumulating since the beginning of the mission. It is unexpected that the sh failed when it could not redirect anymore. All data products that failed have been created and put in the appropriate directories. However, this will mean a failure in the data latency requirements for some of the GMI L1B and GPROF and a few combined products.

Recent 3B41RT and 3B42RT Files Reprocessed

NOAA has reprocessed the global IR data for 10 UTC 26 April through 14 UTC 27 April due to dropped images, and all 3B41RT and 3B42RT files for this time period have been reprocessed by PPS and are now available: 3B41RT.2015042610.7.bin.gz through 3B41RT.2015042714.7.bin.gz 3B42RT.2015042612.7.bin.gz through 3B42RT.2015042715.7.bin.gz Such partial dropouts in the IR data result in somewhat lower quality for IMERG Early and Late Runs, but are not cause for reprocessing.
GPM's How-to Guide for Global Rain Maps
In a data-processing room at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, racks of high-powered computers are making a set of maps. They're not the familiar satellite map of farms, forests and cities. Instead, the maps will show what's in the atmosphere above the ground -- falling rain and snow. The data come from the Global Precipitation Measurement mission, an international partnership led by NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. The GPM Core Observatory launched on Feb. 27, 2014, and after an initial check-out period, began its prime mission on May 29. The data...

Level 2 GPM Microwave Imager (GMI) Data Released

The Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission's Precipitation Processing System at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, has released the Level 2 GPM Microwave Imager (GMI) data to the public. The data set includes precipitation rates, which show how much rain and snowfall accumulate over a given time period. This Level 2 data set of falling rain and snow is computed from Level 1 brightness temperature observations from GMI, the basic measurement made by the instrument of naturally occurring energy radiated, in this case, by precipitation particles (raindrops or