Global rainfall prior to the Launch of Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Satellite

  • Released Thursday, February 27, 2014
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The Global Precipitation Measurement, or GPM, mission will use an international constellation of satellites to study global rain, snow and ice to better understand our climate, weather, and hydrometeorological processes. We cannot understand the water and energy cycle or predict weather and climate without an accurate knowledge of the intensity and distribution of global precipitation. Measurement of various aspects of precipitation (e.g. distribution, amount, rates, and the associated heat release) represents one of the most challenging research problems in Earth science. Yet, accurate global precipitation measurements will benefit weather, climate, hydro-meteorological, and applications communities alike. The concept of Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) is NASA's response to the need for accurate global precipitation measurement.

Satellite-derived rainfall products are critical to understanding are global water cycle. In many parts of our planet, rain gauging stations are either not available or are to sparsely available to develop representative aerial samples. Here is a sample movie showing global rainfall product from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM).

Rainfall colorbar from TRMM's 3B42RT data product

Rainfall colorbar from TRMM's 3B42RT data product

This is the same sequence as the above entry without the colorbar overlay burned into the frame sequence.

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

This page was originally published on Thursday, February 27, 2014.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:51 PM EDT.

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