Effective approximately 04:00 UTC, 9 May 2017 the near-realtime swath products (GMI, partner constellation, radar and combined) will be upgraded from V04 to V05. 

During the conversion the latency of near-realtime will be affected as all the new code and support files need to be modified to carry out this upgrade. We hope this will take no more than 2 hours but can not guarantee it might not be longer.

We will start with the upgrade of radar products, followed as quickly as possible by GMI and then the partner constellation products. We are starting with the radar as this requires close coordination with JAXA and the arrival of the first L1B Ku and Ka V05A products from JAXA will actually initiate the conversion activities.

The format for most products has remained substantially the same. HOWEVER, the GPROF precipitation Level 2 products for GMI and the partner constellation radiometers has substantially changed. Existing programs reading the GPROF products will likely no longer work. File specifications can be retrieved from pps.gsfc.nasa.gov. 

IMERG will remain at V04 but will be changed from V04A to V04B. This is to indicate that the input products have changed. During the upgrade IMERG will not be available until completion of the upgrade and certification by the IMERG algorithm team that the product is correct. This certification process may take some time and until the product is certified, it will NOT be available.

There are no format changes in IMERG. However, there might be a slight differences in the precipitation values. 

The PPS I/O toolkit used from V05 will be 3.80.26.
 
V05 release notes (caveats for use) are available in /NRTPUB/V5ReleaseInfo directory on jsimpson.pps.eosdis.nasa.gov.

Please contact us for questions.