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. 

PPS received replacement GPM Ka/Ku L1B products from JAXA and will reprocess the affected data including Level 2 and 3 data. If you have already obtained products with orbit# 21313 from our archive or through a standing order, etc., please discard and use the replacement products. PPS has replaced the following GPM Ka/Ku L1B data: GPMCOR_KUR_1711281456_1629_021313_1BS_DUB_05A.h5 GPMCOR_KAR_1711281456_1629_021313_1BS_DAB_05A.h5 PPS will reprocess the following L2-3 downstream products: 2ADPR 2A.GPM.DPR.V7-20170308.20171128-S145653-E162926.021313.V05A.HDF5 2AKa 2A.GPM.Ka.V7-20170308.20171128...
On 1 December 2017 sometime between 07:00 UTC and 12:00 UTC, PPS will begin installing V05B algorithms for the near realtime (NRT) IMERG dataset. If no problems arise, the installation should take approximately 4 hours. During this period IMERG products will be unavailable. While this is the first V05 IMERG available from NRT, we are making the data product version V05B so that both the early and the late product will be consistent with the version of the final product which is at V05B. To avoid unnecessary emails, PPS will not send out an email when the V05 installation is complete. Users...
Starting the week of November 20, PPS will generate and release Version 05B of the GPM IMERG Final products. The Version 05A GPM IMERG Final products with data dates between March and October 2014 products are valid HDF5 science products. However, these products yield errors when opened with NetCDF4 utilities and library. To satisfy the requirements of the NetCDF4 users, PPS will release Version 05B GPM IMERG Final products starting next week. All the contents, data format, data server address and documents are unchanged. If you are a HDF5 user, you can keep using these Version 05A products or...
Starting on Monday November 13, 2017, PPS will generate Version 05 GPM IMERG Final products. The V05 IMERG Final products will be available both in STORM: https://storm.pps.eosdis.nasa.gov/storm/ and on "arthurhou": ftp://arthurhou.pps.eosdis.nasa.gov/ NASA requires that science users register at: https://registration.pps.eosdis.nasa.gov/registration/ to access PPS data services. PPS will reprocess the V05 IMERG Final products back to data date March 12, 2014. All users are encouraged to retrieve the V05 IMERG Final products to ensure that they use the most recent products. The V04 IMERG...
25 October 2017 At about 4:57 UTC on 9 October 2017 the NOAA-19 MHS precipitation estimates started displaying artifacts, which was eventually traced to the instrument going into safe mode without shutting down data delivery. Since this happened over the long Columbus Day weekend, it took until 01:47 UTC on 10 October 2017 to shut down the data stream, so the Early and Late IMERG have these (very obvious) artifacts for almost 24 hours. No reprocessing is planned. The sensor resumed operations at 17:31:08 UTC on 16 October 2017, but because the basis for the safe mode was unknown, GPM chose to...

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