Southern Africa 10-Day Rainfall Estimates for Famine Warning

Rainfall estimates for southern Africa provide 10-day precipitation data from 1999 to 2001, produced by the USAID Famine Early Warning System (FEWS). The dataset combines satellite data from Meteosat-7, SSM/I, and AMSU with quality-controlled rain gauge measurements from around 1000 WMO stations. It is stored as 8 km resolution binary raster images in an Albers projection.

Use Cases

• Analyzing spatial patterns of drought and flood risk using the 8 km resolution rainfall grids.
• Validating hydrological models by comparing estimated precipitation against ground station data.
• Studying interannual rainfall variability in southern Africa from 1999 to 2001.
• Assessing the performance of the RFE 1.0 and 2.0 satellite-gauge fusion algorithms.

Strengths

• Integrates multiple data sources, including infrared and microwave satellite data and quality-controlled rain gauge data from approximately 1000 WMO GTS stations.
• Provides a consistent 8 km spatial resolution across southern Africa for three years.
• Documents a clear methodological evolution from the RFE 1.0 (1995-2000) to the improved RFE 2.0 algorithm implemented in 2001.

Limitations

• Conflicting metadata: one source lists a last updated date of 2026-03 12, while another indicates 2001-12-31, suggesting potential platform ingestion errors.
• Data format is flat binary images with no headers, requiring specialized knowledge for correct interpretation and georeferencing.
• Temporal coverage is limited to a three-year period (1999-2001) for the southern Africa subset.

Provenance

Source

U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Famine Early Warning System (FEWS), subset by the SAFARI 2000 data group.

Collection Method

Rainfall estimates generated by blending geostationary satellite infrared data, microwave satellite data (SSM/I, AMSU), and interpolated rain gauge observations using the RFE algorithms.

Time Range

1999 to 2001

Freshness

2026-03-12 22:17:33.145767

Geography

Southern Africa, with data originally produced for continental Africa.