Abstract
Abstract. Precipitation plays an important role in the global energy and water cycle. Accurate knowledge of precipitation amounts reaching the land surface is of special importance for fresh water assessment and management related to land use, agriculture and hydrology, incl. risk reduction of flood and drought. High interest in long-term precipitation analyses arises from the needs to assess climate change and its impacts on all spatial scales. In this framework, the Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC) has been established in 1989 on request of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). It is operated by Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD, National Meteorological Service of Germany) as a German contribution to the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP). This paper provides information on the most recent update of GPCC's gridded data product portfolio including example use cases.
Highlights
The Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC) collects and assures quality of world-wide observational in-situ data from rain gauges in order to provide gridded high-quality and high-resolution land surface precipitation analyses as mandated by World Meteorological Organization (WMO)’s World Climate Research Program and the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS)
The non-real-time products based on the complete GPCC monthly rainfall station database are available in 0.5◦ × 0.5◦ resolution
GPCC’s new global precipitation climatology V.2015 based on data from the more than 75 000 stations that feature records longer than 10 years of length is used as background climatology for the other GPCC analyses using the anomaly interpolation method known as climate aided interpolation (CAI)
Summary
The GPCC collects and assures quality of world-wide observational in-situ data from rain gauges in order to provide gridded high-quality and high-resolution land surface precipitation analyses as mandated by WMO’s World Climate Research Program and the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS). Based on over 25 years of operation the GPCC gridded data products are built on base of the world-wide largest archive of quality controlled in-situ precipitation data (Fig. 1). The non-real-time products based on the complete GPCC monthly rainfall station database (the largest monthly precipitation station database of the world with data from more than 100 000 different stations) are available in 0.5◦ × 0.5◦ resolution. GPCC’s new global precipitation climatology V.2015 (available in 2.5◦ × 2.5◦, 1.0◦ × 1.0◦, 0.5◦ × 0.5◦, and 0.25◦ × 0.25◦ resolution, Fig. 2) based on data from the more than 75 000 stations that feature records longer than 10 years of length is used as background climatology for the other GPCC analyses using the anomaly interpolation method known as climate aided interpolation (CAI)
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