GPM GMI: Global Precipitation Profiles from Microwave Radiometers

Version 07 provides consistent precipitation and atmospheric profiles from a constellation of 11 satellite microwave sensors, including GMI, SSMIS, and AMSR2. The Bayesian retrieval algorithm produces a mean rain rate, vertical hydrometeor structure, and uncertainty estimates for each observation. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center generates this data, with near-realtime, standard, and climate products differing by processing latency and ancillary data sources.

Use Cases

• Modeling global 3-hour precipitation coverage based on the multi-sensor constellation approach.
• Analyzing vertical cloud and precipitation structure based on retrieved hydrometeor profiles.
• Studying long-term climate trends using the consistent, parametric Bayesian retrieval method.
• Validating weather forecasts using near-realtime products derived from GANAL forecast fields.

Strengths

• Provides data from 11 distinct satellite microwave sensors for broad spatial coverage.
• Offers three product tiers (near-realtime, standard, climate) with defined processing latencies of 3 hours, 48 hours, and 3 months.
• Uses a consistent, parametric Bayesian algorithm across all sensors for retrieval uniformity.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale ML tasks.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Goddard Space Flight Center

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing data processed by the Goddard Profiling (2AGPROF) algorithm.

Time Range

Temporal coverage is implied to be ongoing, with data versions superseded by V07.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 02:26:57.861529; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global coverage achieved by the GPM satellite constellation.