CPC Rainfall Estimates

Background

Climate prediction center of NOAA produce daily estimates of rainfall of the regions of the globe, based on real-time raingauge information and various satellite data.

From CPC site

"Daily rainfall estimation files have been created for the southern Asia domain (70-110E;5-35N) beginning May 01, 2001. Originally implemented for use with hydrometeorological and agricultural modeling schemes, this product is updated three times daily at around 9am, 1pm, and 9pm Eastern Local Time and covers a 24 hour period of accumulated precipitation. Gridded binary data used to create graphics seen on this page are available either from the NOAA/CPC/FEWS-NET ftp server or via CD. Resolution of rainfall estimates are 0.1 by 0.1 degree and inputs include GTS station data, as well as geostationary infrared cloud top temperature fields and polar orbiting satellite precipitation estimate data from SSM/I and AMSU-B microwave sensors."

The algorithm is described in this document] at CPC-NOAA website.

Demonstration

• Daily rainfall of Sri Lanka, during the past seven days, based on CPC south Asia data is plotted here.
  • CPC Rainfall Estimates for Sri Lanka

Program

If you are interested in doing this yourself, feel free to download the program. cpc-plot.tar.gz