NOAA CPC (Climate Prediction Center) .25x.25 Daily US UNIFIED Precipitation
One-Line Description:
- CPC .25x.25 Daily US UNIFIED Precipitation gridded and smoothed
Temporal Coverage:
- Daily 1948/01/01 to 1998/12/31: measurement accumulated to 12z of the day
- Monthly 1948/01 to 1998/01.
- Long Term Means for years 1948 to 1998.
Spatial Coverage:
- 0.25 - degree latitude x 0.25 - degree longitude US grid (321x161).
- 20.0N - 60.0N, 220.0E - 300.0E.
Levels:
- N/A
Update Schedule:
- Static
Download/Plot Data:
| Variable | Statistic | Level | Download File | Create Plot/Subset |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Precipitation | Daily Total | Surface | See List | 
|
| ' ' | Monthly Total | Surface | precip.mon.mean.n |
|
| Precipitation | Daily Long Term Mean | Surface | precip.day.ltm.nc |
|
| ' ' | Monthly Long Term Mean | Surface | precip.mon.ltm.nc |
|
Usage Restrictions:
- None
Detailed Description:
-
Dataset is derived from 3 sources: NOAA's National Climate Data Center (NCDC)
daily co-op stations (1948-...), CPC dataset (River
Forecast Centers data + 1st order stations - 1992-...), and daily
accumulations from hourly precipitation dataset (1948-...). There are about 13000
station reports each
day for 1992-..., and about 8000 reports before that yielding about 3x the reports of any
existing historic and operational analyses as of 2000. Future versions of the
unified will also include any other raingauge precip datasets. The data were
QC-ed to eliminate duplicates and overlapping stations, and standard deviation and buddy checks
were applied.. Then they were gridded into 0.25x
0.25, 140W-60W, 20N-60N using a Cressman Scheme.
Landmask is such that actual data resides between 20N-49.5N (lat grids 1-118) and 233.75E to 292.75 (lon grids 56-292).
Values are for over the continental US. Data is daily from 1948-1998. Values are accumulated from 12z of the day before to 12z of the day (with no missing grids ).A land-sea mask is supplied.
Caveats:
- None
Related File Naming & Structure Information:
File Names:
- precip.yyyy.nc for daily (In directory: /Datasets/cpc_us_precip/)
- precip.time,statistic.nc for monthly, long term means (In directory: /Datasets/cpc_us_precip/)
Dataset Format and Size:
- PSD standard NetCDF 37 Mbyte file for each yearly file (packed).
- PSD standard NetCDF 37 Mbyte file for each daily long term mean file (packed).
- PSD standard NetCDF 62 Mbyte file for each monthly file (packed).
- PSD standard NetCDF 1 Mbyte file for each monthly long term mean file (packed).
Missing Data:
- No missing data.
Citation:
- Please note: If you acquire CPC US Unified Precipitation data products from PSD, we ask that you acknowledge us in your use of the data. This may be done by including text such as CPC US Unified Precipitation data provided by the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD, Boulder, Colorado, USA, from their Web site at http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/ in any documents or publications using these data. We would also appreciate receiving a copy of the relevant publications. This will help PSD to justify keeping the CPC US Unified Precipitation data set freely available online in the future. Thank you!
References:
- Higgins, et al., R. W., 2000: Improved US Precipitation Quality Control System and Analysis. NCEP/Climate Prediction Center ATLAS No. 6 (in preparation
- Dataset atlas is available online.
- Higgins, R. W., J. E. Janowiak, and Y.-P. Yao, 1996: A gridded hourly precipitation data base for the United States (1963-1993). NCEP/Climate Prediction Center Atlas 1, national Centers for Environmental Prediction, 46pp.
Original Source:
- NCEP/Climate Prediction Center (Wayne Higgins, Evgeney Yarosh, Wei Shi)
- From webpage http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/realtime/retro.shtml. Data from 1998 onwards is availableuntil the present is available from this site. Note that data from before 1999 does not match the post 1999 data in terms of sources.
Contact:
- Physical Sciences Division: Data Management
NOAA/ESRL/PSD
325 Broadway
Boulder, CO 80305-3328
esrl.psd.data@noaa.gov