How much rain fell at the surface (AMSR microwave)

In plain English

What it measures. Gives instantaneous rain and snowfall rates at the surface over both land and ocean, plus the type of precipitation and, over ocean, its vertical profile.

How it's made. Derived by applying a unified algorithm to data from the AMSR-E and AMSR2 microwave instruments aboard the Aqua and GCOM-W1 satellites.

How & where you'd use it. Helps monitor where and how heavily it's precipitating worldwide, supporting weather and water-cycle studies.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › PRECIPITATION › PRECIPITATION PROFILES › CLOUD WATER PATHATMOSPHERE › PRECIPITATION › PRECIPITATION RATE › CONVECTIVE PRECIPITATIONATMOSPHERE › PRECIPITATION › PRECIPITATION RATE › FROZEN PRECIPITATIONATMOSPHERE › PRECIPITATION › PRECIPITATION PROFILES › ICE WATER PATHATMOSPHERE › PRECIPITATION › PRECIPITATION PROFILES › RAIN WATER PATHATMOSPHERE › PRECIPITATION › PRECIPITATION RATE › SURFACE PRECIPITATION

Coverage & cadence

Time span2002-06-01 → 2011-10-04
Measured byAqua (AMSR-E) · GCOM-W1 (AMSR2)
Processing levelLevel 2
Spatial extent-180, -89.24, 180, 89.24
FormatsHDF-EOS5
StatusCOMPLETE

What you can do with it

Map air pollutants — NO₂, aerosols, ozone
Track greenhouse gases and Earth's energy budget
Feed weather and air-quality analysis

Official description

This AMSR-E/AMSR2 Unified Level-2B data set reports instantaneous surface precipitation rates and types (over land and ocean) and precipitation profiles (over ocean). The data are derived by applying the AMSR-E/AMSR2 unified algorithm to L1R data obtained by the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR) for EOS (AMSR-E) and AMSR2 instruments.

Get the data

au_rain_access.py

import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="AU_Rain",
    version="1",
    bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9),  # your area (W,S,E,N)
    temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"),       # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results)   # stream straight from NSIDC_CPRD

Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.

Official links

Search and order NASA Earth Science data using spatial and temporal filters. Reformatting, reprojecting, and subsetting options are available for some data sets. GET DATA
Quickly download a few files using a web browser, or access data through a command-line utility such as WGET. GET DATA
Search data by spatial and/or temporal ranges or file name. Choose from various download options, including a Python script. GET DATA
A Python library to search and access NASA Earth science data with just a few lines of code GET DATA
Find more data access options and help resources. VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
AMSR-E/AMSR2 Unified L2B Global Swath Surface Precipitation, Version 1 User Guide VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
AMSR2 Precipitation ATBD (GPROF2017, V1 and V2) VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Mission ATBD (GPROF2017 Version 1) VIEW RELATED INFORMATION