South Africa: Dekadal Rainfall Indicators at Subnational Level

Dekadal rainfall indicators for South Africa's subnational administrative units are provided by the World Food Programme using CHIRPS satellite imagery and CHIRPS-GEFS forecasts. Updated as of March 2026, the data tracks 10-day, 1-month, and 3-month rainfall totals, averages, and anomalies across specific WFP-defined geographic boundaries.

Use Cases

• Monitoring drought conditions by analyzing the 3-month rainfall anomaly (r3q) relative to long-term averages
• Predicting agricultural water availability using the 10-day rainfall forecast (rfh) where type is forecast
• Assessing spatial data reliability by checking the number of input pixels (n_pixels) per administrative unit

Strengths

• Includes long-term averages (rfh_avg, r1h_avg, r3h_avg) for baseline comparison
• Standardized WFP Pcode references for administrative units
• Data status tracking via the 'type' column (forecast, preliminary, final)

Limitations

• Satellite-derived estimates may vary from ground-station measurements
• 10-day temporal resolution precludes daily weather analysis
• Geographic aggregation is fixed to WFP administrative boundaries

Provenance

Source

World Food Programme (WFP) using CHIRPS v2 and CHIRPS-GEFS

Collection Method

Aggregation of satellite imagery and in-situ station data into administrative units

Freshness

Updated multiple times per month (1st, 6th, 11th, 16th, 21st, 26th) to reflect new forecasts and finalized observations.

Geography

South Africa