Storm rainfall features near tropical cyclones (TRMM)
What it measures. Bundled satellite observations of rainfall and storm features in and around tropical cyclones, packaged into a consistent database for each storm.
How it's made. Assembled from all the TRMM satellite's instruments for orbits that passed over tropical cyclones, cropped to a box centered on each storm, by university researchers.
How & where you'd use it. Gives hurricane scientists a ready-made framework for studying the rainfall and structure of tropical cyclones across the world's storm basins.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span1997-12-08 → 2011-12-30
- Measured byTRMM (LIS, PR, TMI, VIRS)
- Processing levelLevel 2
- Spatial extent-179.98, -39.14, 180, 39.11
- FormatsHDF4
- StatusCOMPLETE
What you can do with it
- Track deforestation, fire scars and land-cover change
- Monitor crop and vegetation health (NDVI/EVI)
- Map how built-up vs. green an area is over time
Official description
The TRMM Cyclone Precipitation Feature (TCPF) Database - Level 1 provides Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM)-based tropical cyclone data in a common framework for hurricane science research. This dataset aggregated observations from each of the TRMM instruments for each satellite orbit that was coincident with a tropical cyclone in any of the six TC-prone ocean basins. These swath data were co-located and subsetted to a 20-degree longitude by 20-degree latitude bounding box centered on the tropical storm, which is typically large enough to observe the various sizes of TCs and their immediate environments. The TCPF Level 1 dataset was created by researchers at Florida International University (FIU) and the University of Utah (UU) from the UU TRMM Precipitation Feature database. The TCPF database was built by extracting those precipitation features that are identified as tropical cyclones (TC) using the TC best-track data provided by National Hurricane Center or the US Navy's Joint Typhoon Warning Center.
Get the data
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc") # free Earthdata Login
results = earthaccess.search_data(
short_name="trmmtcpfl1",
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 GHRC_DAACBrowsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package. Official links
- Earthdata Search allows users to search, discover, visualize, refine, and access NASA Earth Observation data. GET DATA
- TRMM Version 7 TC Data VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- TRMM Tropical Cyclone Precipitation Feature (TCPF) Database - Level 1 VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- A TRMM-Based Tropical Cyclone Cloud and Precipitation Feature Database. (AMS, 2011) VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- Instructions for citing GHRC data VIEW RELATED INFORMATION