Earth Data School
About
Full catalog/GPM_3PRD
GPM_3PRD·v07·dataset

How much it rained, daily (GPM radar on TRMM, 0.25 deg)

GPM PR on TRMM Precipitation Statistics, at Surface and Fixed Heights 1 day 0.25x0.25 degree V07 (GPM_3PRD) at GES DISC
atmosphere NASA GES_DISC Level 3
In plain English

What it measures. Daily rainfall statistics over the tropics and subtropics, including how often it rained, average rain rates, and details like the presence of different storm types, summarized on a grid.

How it's made. Calculated from the precipitation radar aboard the TRMM satellite, reprocessed into the newer GPM format for consistency with today's rainfall radar products.

How & where you'd use it. Useful for studying rainfall patterns and storm behavior across the tropics. This newer-format version is mainly for researchers building consistent long-term records.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › PRECIPITATION › PRECIPITATION RATE

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span1997-12-07 → 2015-04-01
  • Measured byTRMM (PR)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • Spatial extent-180, -67, 180, 67
  • 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 a new (GPM-formated) TRMM product. There is no equivalent in the old TRMM suite of products. Version 07 is the current version of the data set. Older versions will no longer be available and have been superseded by Version 07. This is the GPM-like formatted TRMM Precipitation Radar (PR) daily gridded data, first released with the "V8" TRMM reprocessing. The daily radar grid data is new for TRMM nomenclature and is introduced for consistency with the GPM Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR). The closest ancestor was 3A25 which was a monthly radar statistics. This product consists of daily statistics of the PR measurements at (0.25x0.25) degrees horizontal resolution. The objective of the algorithm is to calculate various daily statistics from the level 2 PR output products. Four types of statistics are calculated: 1. Probabilities of occurrence (count values) 2. Means and standard deviations In all cases, the statistics are conditioned on the presence of rain or some other quantity such as the presence of stratiform rain or the presence of a bright-band. For example, to compute the unconditioned mean rain rate, the conditional mean must be multiplied by the probability of rain which, in turn is calculated from the ratio of rain counts to the total number of observations in the box of interest. The grids are in the Planetary Grid 2 structure matching the Dual-frequency PR on the core GPM observatory that covers 67S to 67N degrees of latitudes. Areas beyond the ±40 degrees of latitudes are padded with empty grid cells.

Get the data

gpm_3prd_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="GPM_3PRD",
    version="07",
    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 GES_DISC
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.