DPRK Subnational Rainfall Indicators: Dekadal CHIRPS Observations and Forecasts

Dekadal rainfall indicators for subnational administrative units in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, produced by the World Food Programme using CHIRPS satellite imagery and CHIRPS-GEFS forecasts. It includes 10-day, 1-month, and 3-month rainfall aggregations alongside long-term averages and anomalies.

Use Cases

• Monitoring drought conditions by analyzing the 3-month rainfall anomaly (r3q) across administrative units
• Predicting short-term agricultural water availability using the 10-day rainfall forecast (rfh)
• Comparing current precipitation levels against historical norms using long-term average columns (rfh_avg, r1h_avg, r3h_avg)

Strengths

• Includes both satellite observations and CHIRPS-GEFS short-term forecasts
• Provides subnational granularity with standardized WFP Pcode references
• Includes data quality metrics via the n_pixels column

Limitations

• Potential satellite sensor bias in high-altitude regions
• Requires filtering by the type column to distinguish between forecast and final observations

Provenance

Source

World Food Programme (WFP) using CHIRPS and CHIRPS-GEFS data

Collection Method

Satellite imagery aggregation and short-term forecasting models

Freshness

Updated multiple times per month following a fixed schedule on the 1st, 6th, 11th, 16th, 21st, and 26th.

Geography

Democratic People's Republic of Korea