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.

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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. 

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...
PPS is releasing version 3.90.0 build of the PPS TKIO toolkit to the public. This version is currently being used for PPS GPM data production. The tar file directory along with the release notes can be found at: ftp://gpmweb2.pps.eosdis.nasa.gov/pub/PPStoolkit/GPM/tkio-3.90.0/ We have also attached these corresponding release notes for your convenience. If you have any questions, comments or concerns, please contact the PPS Helpdesk at: helpdesk@mail.pps.eosdis.nasa.gov
PPS is announcing the availability of the new NOAA20_ATMS products which will be available starting today, Tuesday September 04, 2018 The NOAA20_ATMS data range starts with November 29, 2017 and will be processed to the current date. November/December 2017 products will be available this afternoon. The corresponding PPS TKIO to be used with this data is tkio 3.80.26: ftp://gpmweb2.pps.eosdis.nasa.gov/pub/PPStoolkit/GPM/tkio-3.80.26/ PPS is currently processing the following NOAA20_ATMS products (below). The entire data set will be available over the next couple of weeks. This consists of...
For the period 03Z August 21 to 16Z August 22, the IMERG real time system experienced an outage of CPC 4-km IR data. Despite the outage, IMERG EARLY and LATE products continued to be produced but users should be aware that the quality of these products during this period may be suspect and should be used judiciously. Furthermore, the products for the first few hours after the outage are less than optimal due to IMERG restart but should be acceptable for most users. Detailed Impacts: (1) The precipitation propagation vectors for the period slowly degraded after 03Z August 21 due to the missing...

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