TRMM_2A53: Ground Radar Rain Rate Maps for Satellite Validation

TRMM Ground Validation Radar Site Rain Rate Map L2 1 hour 2 km V7 provides instantaneous surface rain rate maps in Cartesian coordinates with a 2 km horizontal resolution. The data is a key product of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Ground Validation effort, which collects and quality-controls data from ground-based radar, rain gauges, and disdrometers. These maps are produced for comparison with TRMM satellite products to validate precipitation measurements from space.

Use Cases

• Validating TRMM satellite precipitation retrievals based on ground-based radar rain rate maps.
• Analyzing rain rate spatial patterns at 2 km resolution for specific geographic regions like Texas or Florida.
• Comparing precipitation measurements from different instrument types (radar, gauges, disdrometers) at primary validation sites.
• Studying drop size distribution (DSD) by integrating radar data with co-located disdrometer measurements from sites like Kwajalein.

Strengths

• Data is quality-controlled as part of a formal NASA Ground Validation (GV) effort for the TRMM mission.
• Provides specific, high-resolution (2 km) spatial mapping over defined areas up to 724 km x 568 km.
• Integrates data from multiple instrument types (radar, rain gauges, disdrometers) for cross-validation.

Limitations

• Critical metadata is missing or conflicting: column names are unknown, and the last update date conflicts between 2014 (nasa_earthdata) and 2026 (datagov).
• The dataset's size and row count are not specified on any platform, hindering assessment of its scale.
• Documentation appears sparse, with no detailed schema provided for the underlying data files.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Collection Method

Collected from ground-based radar, rain gauges, and disdrometers at primary validation sites, then quality-controlled and processed into validation products.

Freshness

2026-04-09 21:28:05.218140 (from datagov, but conflicts with nasa_earthdata date of 2014-12-31)

Geography

Primary sites: Darwin, Australia; Houston, Texas; Kwajalein, Republic of the Marshall Islands; Melbourne, Florida; and NASA Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia.