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GPCC Precipitation Climatology Version 2020
Note !!
(Version 2022 is now available)


Always quote citation when using data!
DOI for Scientific and Technical Data
10.5676/DWD_GPCC/CLIM_M_V2020_025 (for 0.25° resolution)
10.5676/DWD_GPCC/CLIM_M_V2020_050 (for 0.5° resolution)
10.5676/DWD_GPCC/CLIM_M_V2020_100 (for 1.0° resolution)
10.5676/DWD_GPCC/CLIM_M_V2020_250 (for 2.5° resolution)


Title
GPCC Climatology Version 2020 (at 0.25°, 0.5°, 1.0°, 2.5°): Monthly Land-Surface Precipitation Climatology for Every Month and the Total Year from Rain-Gauges built on GTS-based and Historical Data
Subtitle
Globally Gridded Monthly Totals
What's New
variable interpolation_error (YAMAMOTO) is available in the NetCDF file (for 0.25°, 0.5°, 1.0°, 2.5°) resolution
[Yamamoto, J.K. An Alternative Measure of the Reliability of Ordinary Kriging Estimates Mathematical Geology, Springer, 2000, 32, 489-509]

variable systematic_gauge_error (mean of the systematic gauge error) is available in the NetCDF file (for 0.5°, 1.0°, 2.5°) resolution

variable precip (precipitation per grid) is available in the NetCDF file (for 0.25°, 0.5°, 1.0°, 2.5°) resolution

variable numgauge (number of stations per grid) is available in the NetCDF file (for 0.25°, 0.5°, 1.0°, 2.5°) resolution

-> Product Info
Citation
For 0.25° grid resolution:
Rustemeier Elke; Becker, Andreas; Finger, Peter; Schneider, Udo; Ziese, Markus (2020): GPCC Climatology Version 2020 at 0.25°: Monthly Land-Surface Precipitation Climatology for Every Month and the Total Year from Rain-Gauges built on GTS-based and Historical Data. DOI: 10.5676/DWD_GPCC/CLIM_M_V2020_025

For 0.5° grid resolution:
Rustemeier Elke; Becker, Andreas; Finger, Peter; Schneider, Udo; Ziese, Markus (2020): GPCC Climatology Version 2020 at 0.5°: Monthly Land-Surface Precipitation Climatology for Every Month and the Total Year from Rain-Gauges built on GTS-based and Historical Data. DOI: 10.5676/DWD_GPCC/CLIM_M_V2020_050

For 1.0° grid resolution:
Rustemeier Elke; Becker, Andreas; Finger, Peter; Schneider, Udo; Ziese, Markus (2020): GPCC Climatology Version 2020 at 1.0°: Monthly Land-Surface Precipitation Climatology for Every Month and the Total Year from Rain-Gauges built on GTS-based and Historical Data. DOI: 10.5676/DWD_GPCC/CLIM_M_V2020_100

For 2.5° grid resolution:
Rustemeier Elke; Becker, Andreas; Finger, Peter; Schneider, Udo; Ziese, Markus (2020): GPCC Climatology Version 2020 at 2.5°: Monthly Land-Surface Precipitation Climatology for Every Month and the Total Year from Rain-Gauges built on GTS-based and Historical Data. DOI: 10.5676/DWD_GPCC/CLIM_M_V2020_250
Creators
Rustemeier Elke; Becker, Andreas; Finger, Peter; Schneider, Udo; Ziese, Markus
Publisher
Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC, http://gpcc.dwd.de/) at Deutscher Wetterdienst
Publication Year
2020
Summary
The new Global Precipitation Climatology is focussing on the period 1951-2000 and consists of data from ca. 85,000 stations. The climatology comprises normals collected by WMO (CLINOs), delivered by the countries to GPCC or calculated from time-series of monthly data (with at least 10 complete years of data) available in our data base. In case that time series of sufficient length (more than 40 years) for the period 1951-2000 were not available from a specific station, then climatological normals have also been calculated for 30-year reference periods (i.e. 1931-1960, 1941-1970, 1951-1980, 1961-1990, 1971-2000, 1981-2010 or 1991-2020) with at least 20 years of data. If even this was not possible for a station, then normals have been calculated for shorter periods with at least 10 complete years of data.
This climatology is available on a regular latitude/longitude grid with a spatial resolution of 0.25° x 0.25°, 0.5° x 0.5°, 1.0° x 1.0°, and 2.5° x 2.5°. This GPCC product has been developed as a background field, for superposition of an interpolated anomaly field according to the period of interest. All other GPCC products utilize the background fields of the GPCC Climatology to grid the monthly data at the corresponding resolution with the anomaly interpolation method.
Peer-reviewed Articles

"Global gridded precipitation over land: a description of the new GPCC First Guess Daily product"
K. Schamm, M. Ziese, A. Becker, P. Finger, A. Meyer-Christoffer, U. Schneider, M. Schröder, and P. Stender
in Earth System Science Data, DOI: 10.5194/essd-6-49-2014

"Evaluating the hydrological cycle over land using the newly-corrected precipitation climatology from the Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC)"
U. Schneider, P. Finger, A. Meyer-Christoffer, E. Rustemeier, M. Ziese, and A. Becker
in Atmosphere, DOI: 10.3390/atmos8030052

"GPCC's new land surface precipitation climatology based on quality-controlled in situ data and its role in quantifying the global water cycle"
U. Schneider, A. Becker, P. Finger, A. Meyer-Christoffer, M. Ziese, B. Rudolf
in Theoretical and Applied Climatology, DOI: 10.1007/s00704-013-0860-x

"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"
A. Becker, P. Finger, A. Meyer-Christoffer, B. Rudolf, K. Schamm, U. Schneider, and M. Ziese
in Earth System Science Data, DOI: 10.5194/essd-5-71-2013

"The GPCC Drought Index - a new, combined and gridded global drought index"
M. Ziese, U. Schneider, A. Meyer-Christoffer, K. Schamm, J. Vido, P. Finger, P. Bissoli, S.Pietsch, A. Becker
in Earth System Science Data, DOI: 10.5194/essd-6-285-2014
General user recommendations
Users are referred to following gridded Global Precipitation Climate Centre (GPCC) products:

GPCC Climatology 1951-2000 (GPCC_Clim) with high representativeness, for application as a reference, and for utilization of the anomaly interpolation method.

GPCC Full Data Monthly Product (GPCC_FD) with high accuracy, for, e.g., verification of models, or for analysis of historical global precipitation, or for research concerning the global water cycle, e.g., teleconnection analyses.

GPCC Full Data Daily Product (GPCC_FD_D) is recommended to be used when the daily precipitation information is of highest importance, e.g. for analyses of extreme events and related statistics at daily resolution.

GPCC HOMPRA-Europe (HOMPRA-Europe) with homogenized precipitation data, suitable for trend analyses.

GPCC Monitoring Product (GPCC_MP) with high availability and reasonable timeliness, for applications like calibration of satellite data, or early annual reporting.

GPCC First Guess Monthly Product (GPCC_FG) with high timeliness, to be applied for, e.g., drought monitoring.

GPCC First Guess Daily Product (GPCC_FG_D) with high timeliness, to be applied for, e.g., drought monitoring.

GPCC Drought Index Product (GPCC_DI_M) with high timeliness, to be applied for, e.g., drought monitoring.

Please notice also the (GPCC Download Gate) with the current versions of all GPCC datasets and additional informations.
Version
2020
Temporal Coverage
January - December
Spatial Coverage
Latitude: -90.0 to 90.0; Longitude: -180.0 to 180.0
Data Format(s)
gzip compressed NetCDF format description
Tools
List of Software for Manipulating or Displaying NetCDF Data show list
Panoply netCDF, HDF and GRIB Data Viewer Panoply Home
Climate Data Operators CDO CDO Home
Datasize
min. 200 KByte - max. 10 MByte per gzip archive
Contact
Dr. Andreas Becker, Head
Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC)
c/o Deutscher Wetterdienst
Postfach 10 04 65
D-63004 Offenbach/Main
GERMANY
e-mail: gpcc@dwd.de

Tel.: + 49 (0)69 / 8062-2900
Fax: + 49 (0)69 / 8062-3987
Supplementary infos
Product Info
Terms of Use
NetCDF Format (gzip compressed) 0.25 ° (.gz ~ 17MB) 0.5 ° (.gz ~ 5.3MB) 1.0 ° (.gz ~ 1.6KB) 2.5 ° (.gz ~ 367KB)
precipitation, number of stations, interpolation error, systematic gauge error per grid for Jan-Dec download download download download


Explore the GPCC Normals as GIF or PDF

View Station distribution for June Number of stations per grid for June
GIF GPCC Normals station distribution for june GPCC Normals number of stations per grid for june
PDF GPCC Normals station distribution for june GPCC Normals number of stations per grid for june


View GPCC Normals for the YEAR in mm/year
GIF GPCC Normals for the YEAR
PDF GPCC Normals for the YEAR


View January February March April May June
GIF GPCC Normals for january GPCC Normals for february GPCC Normals for march GPCC Normals for april GPCC Normals for may GPCC Normals for june
View July August September October November December
GIF GPCC Normals for july GPCC Normals for august GPCC Normals for september GPCC Normals for october GPCC Normals for november GPCC Normals for december


View January February March April May June
PDF GPCC Normals for january GPCC Normals for february GPCC Normals for march GPCC Normals for april GPCC Normals for may GPCC Normals for june
View July August September October November December
PDF GPCC Normals for july GPCC Normals for august GPCC Normals for september GPCC Normals for october GPCC Normals for november GPCC Normals for december





 
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