What is Accumulated Precipitation from IMERG?
The recent generation of weather observatory satellites, namely Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) constellation satellites, is the lead observatory of the 10 highly advanced earth orbiting weather research satellites. Indeed, GPM is the first satellite that has been designed to measure light rain and snowfall, in addition to heavy tropical rainfall.
How is Global Precipitation measured from space?
Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) constellation satellites are an international mission to provide next-generation observations of rain and snow. NASA and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched the GPM Core Observatory satellite on 27 February 2014, carrying advanced instruments that will set a new standard for precipitation measurements from space. GPM constellation satellites provided by the American National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Eumetsat’s MetOp-B and planned MetOp-C, the NASA-NOAA (American National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Suomi National Polar-orbiting, France and India’s Megha-Tropiques, NOAA’s Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellites, Japan’s first Global Change Observation Mission-Water, U.S. Defense Department meteorological satellites and NOAA’s Joint Polar Satellite System. The data they provide will be used to unify precipitation measurements made by an international network of partner satellites to quantify when, where, and how much it rains or snows around the world more...
Applications of GPM
This global integrated Multi-satellite Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) precipitation datasets provides global rain and snowfall rates for the entire world every 30 minutes. IMERG is derived using data from Global Precipitation Measurement (DPM) mission- a network of international satellites including the GPM Core Observatory. Using this dataset, it is possible to calculate the amount of accumulated rainfall for any region over a given period of time.
IMERG is superior to the other products in all study areas and could be used in future for meteorological and hydrological models
this animation shows the accumulation of rainfall across the globe for a week in August 2014. In addition to the dramatic accumulation near Japan due to TYPHOON Halong and the track of Hurricane Bertha off the east coast of the United States, it is also possible to see rare August storm over the north sea near Europe , the origins of Hurricane Gonzalo on the western coast of Africa and deep tropical depression that produced floods across northern India.
Credits: IMERG, GPM
