Malawi Subnational Rainfall: Dekadal CHIRPS Indicators and Forecasts

Malawi subnational rainfall indicators provided by the World Food Programme (WFP) based on CHIRPS satellite imagery and GEFS forecasts. The data covers 10-day, 1-month, and 3-month intervals, including long-term averages and anomaly percentages for each administrative unit. Updates occur six times per month to transition from forecasts to final observations.

Use Cases

• Assessing agricultural drought risk by comparing 3-month rainfall (r3h) against long-term averages (r3h_avg)
• Short-term water availability modeling using the 10-day rainfall forecast (rfh) when the type column is 'forecast'
• Spatial analysis of rainfall anomalies (rfq) across different Pcode-identified administrative regions

Strengths

• Includes long-term averages (rfh_avg, r1h_avg, r3h_avg) for baseline comparison
• Uses standardized WFP Pcode references for humanitarian data interoperability
• Provides data quality transparency via the n_pixels column

Limitations

• Satellite-derived CHIRPS estimates may deviate from local ground-station measurements in complex terrain
• Final observations for a given month are not available until the middle of the following month

Provenance

Source

WFP - World Food Programme

Collection Method

Aggregated from Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Station data (CHIRPS) version 2 and CHIRPS-GEFS forecasts.

Freshness

Updated six times per month on a fixed schedule (1st, 6th, 11th, 16th, 21st, 26th).

Geography

Malawi