Legates Precipitation Climatology: Global Monthly Mean Rain Estimates

A global climatology of monthly mean precipitation developed using 24,635 terrestrial station records and 2,223 oceanic gridpoint estimates. The data were obtained from various archives, screened for errors, and interpolated onto a 0.5-degree latitude/longitude lattice. This dataset is produced by NASA and is used to validate climate models, compare with satellite estimates, and study global water balance.

Use Cases

• Validate general circulation model simulations of present-day precipitation climate based on the global lattice of precipitation estimates.
• Perform ground-based comparison with satellite-derived precipitation estimates using the interpolated gauge data.
• Conduct global water balance studies based on the adjusted precipitation climatology.
• Analyze spatial variations in precipitation using the 0.5-degree latitude/longitude lattice.

Strengths

• Contains 24,635 independent terrestrial station records.
• Includes 2,223 oceanic gridpoint estimates extrapolated from coastal and island observations.
• Data were screened for coding errors, merged, and redundant stations were removed.
• A procedure was applied to estimate and adjust for gauge catch errors totaling nearly 11%.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Precipitation gauge catches are known to underestimate actual precipitation, though adjustments were made.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Data were obtained from a variety of source archives, screened for errors, merged, and interpolated using a spherically-based algorithm.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 00:56:50.331926; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global