IMERG Early Run Example January 24th, 2020

Data

Precipitation data from the GPM and TRMM missions are made available free to the public in a variety of formats from several sources at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. This section outlines the different types of data available, the levels of processing, the sources to download the data, and some helpful tips for utilizing precipitation data in your research.

Beginner Resources

Training

Tutorials

Data Visualization

Data FAQ

Learn about IMERG

 

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I get precipitation data for my specific location?

There are several sources for downloading and viewing data which allow you to subset the data to only include specific parameters and/or geographic locations. These include the GES DISCGiovanni and STORM. In Giovanni you can obtain data for a specific country, U.S. state, or watershed by using the "Show Shapes" option in the "Select Region" pane.

What happened to the TRMM Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA / 3B4x) data products?

The TRMM satellilte has been decommissioned and stopped collecting data in April 2015. The transition from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) data products to the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission products has completed as of August 2019. The GPM IMERG dataset now includes TRMM-era data from June 2000 to the present, and other TRMM-era data has been reprocessed with GPM-era algorithms and is now available on the GPM FTP servers. TMPA data production ended as of December 31st, 2019 and the TRMMOpen FTP server has been shut down. Historical TMPA data is still available to download from the NASA GES DISC at: https://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/datasets?keywords=TMPA&page=1

Click here for more details on the transition from TMPA to IMERG. 

Am I allowed to use GPM data for my research?

Yes, in line with NASA's general data policy. Please refer to the GPM Data Policy for further details.

How do I give credit for using GPM data?
Where can I find detailed documentation on the precipitation algorithms?

Browse our directory of GPM & TRMM data products to locate your desired algorithm, then click on the links in the algorithm description under "Documentation". All documentation is also available at the Precipitation Processing System website

What is the spatial and temporal resolution of GPM data?

The resolution of Level 0, 1, and 2 data is determined by the footprint size and observation interval of the sensors involved.  Level 3 products are given a grid spacing that is driven by the typical footprint size of the input data sets.

For our popular multi-satellite GPM IMERG data products, the spatial resolution is 0.1° x 0.1° (or roughly 10km x 10km) with a 30 minute temporal resolution.

Visit the directory of GPM & TRMM data products for details on the resolution of each specific products.

Can I use images or videos from this site or other NASA websites?

For questions about permission for using NASA images and videos, please refer to NASA's official Media Usage Guidelines. For any additional questions please contact bert.ulrich@nasa.gov

Is it possible to subset GPM data?

There are several sources for downloading and viewing data which allow you to subset the data to only include specific parameters and/or geographic locations. These include the GES DISCGiovanni and STORM. In Giovanni you can obtain data for a specific country, U.S. state, or watershed by using the "Show Shapes" option in the "Select Region" pane.

What is the difference between "Near Real-time" (NRT) and "Production" / "Research" data?

GPM data products can be divided into two groups (near real-time and production) depending on how soon they are created after the satellite collects the observations. For applications such as weather, flood, and crop forecasting that need precipitation estimates as soon as possible, near real-time data products are most appropriate.  GPM near real-time (GMI & DPR) products are generally available within a few hours of observation.  For all other applications, production data products are generally the best data sets to use because additional or improved inputs are used to increase accuracy.  These other inputs are only made available several days, or in some cases, several months, after the satellite observations are taken, and the production data sets are computed after all data have arrived, making possible a more careful analysis.

For the GPM IMERG dataset, IMERG Early and Late Runs are the near real-time products, while IMERG Final Run is the research / production product. Click here to learn more about the differences between IMERG Early, Late and Final. 

Starting early the week of March 04, 2019 or shortly after ; PPS will be doing a limited RETRO-processing of Level 1 - Level 3 F16 SSMIS as Version V05B for the period of April 2015 through January 2018. Please see the table below for the specific products and dates affected. If you have previously obtained any of the data listed below, please discard these and replace this data with the retro-processed data as listed. +-------------------------+---------------------+---------------------+----------------+------------+ | DataType | Start of Data | End of Data | ProductVersion | # Granules | +-...
Beginning on Monday February 04, 2019, the Level 2 and Level 3 GPM GPROF products will be produced with an updated monthly emissivity class file (see developers comments below). PPS will increment the product version for all Level 2 and Level 3 GPROF products starting with the first full orbit on data date February 1, 2019. The current version of these products will cease with data date Jan 31, 2019 and will remain unchanged. The new production version numbers/ designations will be incremented as shown in the table below. Data Source Product Version F16_SSMIS V05B F17_SSMIS V05B F18_SSMIS V05B...
Effective on the date and time above, all the NRY GPROF data product verson numbers were changed by increasing the letter of the data product version. This letter change means that data products were changed but no backward processing is undertaken. Only the products forward of the date/time have been altered. So, for GMI GPROF the vesion changed from V05A to V05B. Other instrument GPROF retrievals had a similar change but appropriate to their starting data product version. The algorithm itself did not change but some of the database profiles did. The algorithm team provided the following...
The Precipitation Processing System (PPS) is scheduled to begin TRMM L2-L3 Combined GPM V06A data reprocessing on Wednesday October 31, 2018. These TRMM/GPM data products will be made available through the PPS "arthurhou" ftp archive: ftp://arthurhou.pps.eosdis.nasa.gov/ and STORM (PPS's Online Data Ordering Interface): https://storm.pps.eosdis.nasa.gov after these products are produced and archived. NASA requires that all science data users register in order to access these products. If you haven't registered, please visit the PPS registration portal at: https://registration.pps.eosdis.nasa...
The Precipitation Processing System (PPS) will begin processing and reprocessing GPM Level 2 - Level 3 DPR and Combined data as version V06A. The switch to V06A for these products will begin with October 01, 2018 GPM data. This data will be available to the public after October 04, 2018 at the earliest once they have been reviewed and approved by the Science Team. The following data products will be processed/reprocessed as V06A: 2AKa 2AKu 2ADPR 3DPRD 3DPR_ASC 3DPR_DES 3DPR 2BCMB 3CMB_DAY 3CMB 2HSLH 3GSLH 3HSLH_DAY 3HSLH These GPM data products will be made available through the PPS "arthurhou...
Related Articles
IMERG Grand Average Climatology 2001 - 2019
A new data product merges data from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) and the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission, giving meteorologists and researchers access to a 20-year precipitation record. How much rain and snow fall on Earth in any given year? NASA scientists are answering this question more accurately than ever before and observing precipitation in the most remote places on Earth. And it’s all thanks to an international constellation of satellites. At any given time, instruments onboard about a dozen satellites contribute to a record of the world’s rain and snow
Using the IMERG Long-term Precipitation Data for Applications
A long precipitation data set like the new GPM IMERG V06 product is valuable for many applications and for decision-making. Accurate and reliable precipitation records are not only crucial to understanding trends and variability but also for water management resources and food security, ecological management, and weather, climate and hydrological forecasting. Here we present a few highlights showcasing how GPM IMERG is helping a variety of end users make decisions that will benefit society for years to come. GPM IMERG Data Used for Wind Energy Map of average precipitation in north-central...
Creating Digital Hurricanes
Every day, scientists at NASA work on creating better hurricanes – on a computer screen. At NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, a team of scientists spends its days incorporating millions of atmospheric observations, sophisticated graphic tools and lines of computer code to create computer models simulating the weather and climate conditions responsible for hurricanes. Scientists use these models to study the complex environment and structure of tropical storms and hurricanes. Getting the simulations right has huge societal implications, which is why one Goddard...
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...
GPM's First Global Rainfall and Snowfall Map
The Global Precipitation Measurement mission has produced its first global map of rainfall and snowfall. Like a lead violin tuning an orchestra, the GPM Core Observatory – launched one year ago on Feb. 27, 2014, as a collaboration between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency – acts as the standard to unify precipitation measurements from a network of 12 satellites. The result is NASA's Integrated Multi-satellite Retrievals for GPM data product, called IMERG, which combines all of these data from 12 satellites into a single, seamless map. The map covers more of the globe than any...
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...
GPM Data from a March 2014 Snostorm
Image Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Download this video in HD formats from NASA Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio The most accurate and comprehensive collection of rain, snowfall and other types of precipitation data ever assembled now is available to the public. This new resource for climate studies, weather forecasting, and other applications is based on observations by the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory, a joint mission of NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), with contributions from a constellation of international partner...

Hide Body

Hide Date