Global precipitation over land from GPCC Monitoring Product

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Access

UNRESTRICTED:

RESTRICTED:This link to the data set is only available for a restricted user group. The data set is only accessible in CEN/MPI net or accessible from external nets with a customer account. Please contact ICDC if you would like to access this data from outside the network.

View GPCC Monitoring data at LAS
Access GPCC Monitoring data via OPeNDAP
Data access via file system: /data/icdc/atmosphere/gpcc_monitoring_product

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Description

The Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC) is operated by the German Weather Service (DWD) under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organization. It's mission is to collect global in-situ precipitation data to produce quantitative global precipitation analyses and water balance studies.

For the "GPCC Monitoring Product", quality-controlled station data from worldwide routine measurements (7000 to 9000 SYNOP and CLIMAT reports per month) are used to calculate the monthly precipitation over land areas. It is a routinely monthly gridded dataset that is updated on a continuous basis so that data is available approximately 2-3 months before the current date.

The monitoring product was calculated on the basis of GPCC's associated global precipitation climatology, which includes tens of thousands of stations, each of which relates to a specific period of time. On the basis of GPCC's new Global Precipitation Climatology (V. 2022) used as background climatology, based on climatological normals for ca. 86,100 stations focusing on the period 1951-2000, the Monitoring Product (V.2022) is calculated as anomaly analysis superimposed on the background climatology.

The GPCC Monitoring Product is suitable for all applications, that need gridded, monthly near-realtime data of high quality, such as comparisons with current satellite data. Further information on this data set can be found in the references.

In addition, we offer the "GPCC Full Data Re-Analysis", which has a higher data quality than the data monitoring product, but has not the near realtime availability.

Last update of data set at ICDC: July 4, 2024

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Parameters

Parameters of the GPCC Monitoring data set
Name	Unit
Sum of precipitation	mm/Month
Number of gauges per grid	Number
Proportion of solid precipitation	%
Proportion of liquid precipitation	%
Absolute systematic gauge error	mm/Month
Relative systematic gauge error	%
Systematic gauge error correction factor	Factor 1 to 3

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Coverage, spatial and temporal resolution

Period and temporal resolution:

01/1982 to 04/2024
Monthly

Coverage and spatial resolution:

Global, over land
Spatial resolution: 1° x 1°, cartesian grid
Geographic longitude: 0°E to 360°E
Geographic latitude: -90°N to 90°N
Dimension: 360 columns x 180 rows
Altitude: following terrain

Format:

NetCDF

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Data quality

The high quality of the data is assured by the DWD. The data contain error information starting at year 2007. Users of the gridded data sets should take into account the number of gauges per gridpoint and should apply the recommended correction factors for systematic errors. For more information see: https://opendata.dwd.de/climate_environment/GPCC/PDF/GPCC_intro_products_lastversion.pdf .

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Contact

Dr. Andreas Becker (Leiter des WZN)
Weltzentrum für Niederschlagsklimatologie
c/o Deutscher Wetterdienst
Referat KU42
Postfach 10 04 65
63004 Offenbach am Main
Tel.: +49 (0)69 / 8062-2900
Fax: +49 (0)69 / 8062-3987
email: gpcc (at) dwd.de

Stefan Kern
University of Hamburg
E-Mail: stefan.kern (at) uni-hamburg.de

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References

Websites:

Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC), https://www.dwd.de/DE/leistungen/wzn/wzn.html
GPCC Monitoring Product Version 6, https://opendata.dwd.de/climate_environment/GPCC/html/gpcc_monitoring_v6_doi_download.html
Weather and Climate - Deutscher Wetterdienst -- Klimadatenzentrum-WZN, http://wzn.dwd.de/
GPCC Homepage, http://gpcc.dwd.de/

Literature:

U. Schneider, P. Finger, A. Meyer-Christoffer, E. Rustemeier, M. Ziese, and A. Becker, 2017: “Evaluating the hydrological cycle over land using the newly-corrected precipitation climatology from the Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC)”, Atmosphere, 8(3), 52, DOI:10.3390/atmos8030052; http://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/8/3/52
A. Becker, P. Finger, A. Meyer-Christoffer, B. Rudolf, K. Schamm, U. Schneider, and M. Ziese, 2013: “A description of the global land-surface precipitation data products of the Global Precipitation Climatology Centre with sample applications including centennial (trend) analysis from 1901-present”, Earth System Science Data, DOI: 10.5194/essd-5-71-2013; http://www.earth-syst-sci-data.net/5/71/2013/essd-5-71-2013.html
U. Schneider, A. Becker, P. Finger, A. Meyer-Christoffer, M. Ziese, and B. Rudolf, 2014: “GPCC's new land-surface precipitation climatology based on quality-controlled in-situ data and its role in quantifying the global water cycle”, Theor. Appl. Climatology, 115, 15-40, DOI: 10.1007/s00704-013-0860-x; http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00704-013-0860-x
Current description of GPCC's products, https://opendata.dwd.de/climate_environment/GPCC/PDF/GPCC_intro_products_lastversion.pdf

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Data citation

Users of the GPCC datasets are asked for feedback to DWD about usage.

Please cite the data as follows:

Schneider, Udo; Becker, Andreas; Finger, Peter; Rustemeier Elke; Ziese, Markus (2022): GPCC Monitoring Product: Near Real-Time Monthly Land-Surface Precipitation from Rain-Gauges based on SYNOP and CLIMAT data. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5676/DWD_GPCC/Clim_M_V2022_100, [last access July 2 2024].

and with the following acknowledgments:

Thanks to ICDC, CEN, University of Hamburg for data support.

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