Earth ID: 4257

IMERG Global Precipitation Rates

Visualizations by Horace Mitchell Released on February 26, 2015

NASA's Global Precipitation Measurement mission has produced its first global map of rainfall and snowfall. The GPM Core Observatory launched one year ago on Feb. 27, 2014 as a collaboration between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and acts as the standard to unify precipitation measurements from a network of 12 satellites. The result is NASA's Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM data product, called IMERG, which combines data from all 12 satellites into a single, seamless map. The map covers more of the globe than any previous precipitation data set and is updated every half hour, allowing scientists to see how rain and snow storms move around nearly the entire planet. As scientists work to understand all the elements of Earth's climate and weather systems, and how they could change in the future, GPM provides a major step forward in providing the scientific community comprehensive and consistent measurements of precipitation.

Color bar for liquid precipitation rates (ie, rain rates). Shades of green represent low amounts of liquid precipitation, whereas shades of red represent high amounts of precipitation.

Color bar for frozen precipitation rates (eg, snow rates). Shades of cyan represent low amounts of frozen precipitation, whereas shades of purple represent high amounts of precipitation.

Newer Version

Science On a Sphere: A Global Tour of Precipitation from NASA

GPM Yields IMERG

NASA On Air: NASA’s GPM Core Satellite Mission Provides Unprecedented Worldwide Views Of Storms (4/1/2015)

Seeing Beneath Earth’s Clouds

IMERG Global Precipitation Rates (New Colorbar)

Instagram: NASA's First Global Rainfall And Snowfall Map

Visualization Credits

Horace Mitchell (NASA/GSFC): Lead Animator
George Huffman (NASA/GSFC): Lead Scientist
Gail Skofronick Jackson (NASA/GSFC): Lead Scientist
Dalia B Kirschbaum (NASA/GSFC): Lead Scientist
Ryan Fitzgibbons (USRA): Lead Producer
Rani Gran (NASA/GSFC): Producer
Alex Kekesi (GST): Animator

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

Short URL to share this page:
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4257

Mission:
Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM)

Data Used:
IMERG 4/1/2014 00:00 - 8/26/2014 23:30Z
Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details nor the data sets themselves on our site.

This item is part of this series:
GPM Animations

Keywords:
DLESE >> Atmospheric science
GCMD >> Earth Science >> Atmosphere >> Precipitation
GCMD >> Earth Science >> Atmosphere >> Precipitation >> Precipitation Rate
SVS >> Hyperwall
SVS >> Climate >> Precipitation
NASA Science >> Earth
SVS >> Presentation

GCMD keywords can be found on the Internet with the following citation: Olsen, L.M., G. Major, K. Shein, J. Scialdone, S. Ritz, T. Stevens, M. Morahan, A. Aleman, R. Vogel, S. Leicester, H. Weir, M. Meaux, S. Grebas, C.Solomon, M. Holland, T. Northcutt, R. A. Restrepo, R. Bilodeau, 2013. NASA/Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) Earth Science Keywords. Version 8.0.0.0.0