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imd-gridded-rainfall·dataset

IMD Gridded Rainfall — India's official rain record (1901+)

IMD Gridded Daily Rainfall (0.25 deg)
atmosphere IMD India Meteorological Department active
In plain English

What it measures. Daily rainfall over India on a fine grid, built from the country's dense rain-gauge network — the official, ground-based record of the monsoon back to 1901.

How it's made. The India Meteorological Department interpolates thousands of rain gauges onto a 0.25-degree grid.

How & where you'd use it. The authoritative baseline for monsoon, drought and flood analysis — and the ground-truth to validate satellite rainfall (IMERG/CHIRPS). Free from IMD Pune.

What's measured

rainfallprecipitationgaugemonsoonIMDgriddedclimatedrought

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span1901-01-01 → ongoing
  • Spatial extent68, 6, 98, 37

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

India Meteorological Department's gauge-based gridded daily rainfall over India (0.25 deg from 1901) — the authoritative ground-truth for the monsoon and the right cross-check for satellite rainfall. Free download from IMD Pune.

Get the data

imd-gridded-rainfall_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="imd-gridded-rainfall",
    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 India Meteorological Department
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.