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 this week (Wednesday March 13, 2019 or soon after) PPS will commence GPM IMERG data reprocessing for IMERG V06. PPS will start reprocessing with the GPM-era data and will make these products available as they are archived. Thereafter, we will reprocess the TRMM-era data. The first available products for the GPM-era will start with June 2014. TRMM-era products will span June 2000 - May 2014. Earlier TRMM-era processing, 1998-01 to 2000-05, will proceed when all required input data have been provided. We have attached the latest IMERG documentation for your convenience. Developers and...
PPS will be doing a full reprocessing of Level 2 - Level 3 PRPS MT1 SAPHIR data as V06A for release starting Wednesday March 06, 2019. In addition to the regular data products there will be a Climatology product as with the current L2-L3 GPROF data products. The following data will be reprocessed as V06A: +-----------------------------------------+-----------------+-------------------+ | DataType |Start of Data | End of Data | +-----------------------------------------+-----------------+-------------------+ | 2APRPSMT1SAPHIR | 2014-02-01 | 2018-12-15 | | 3PRPSMT1SAPHIR | 2014-02-01 | 2018-12...
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...

Hide Body

Hide Date