Following the launch of the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory, two advanced high resolution multi-satellite precipitation products namely, Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) and Global Satellite Mapping of Precipitation (GSMaP) version 6 are released. A critical evaluation of these newly released precipitation data sets is very important for both the end users and data developers. This study provides a comprehensive assessment of IMERG research product and GSMaP estimates over India at a daily scale for the southwest monsoon season (June to September 2014). The GPM-based precipitation products are inter-compared with widely used TRMM Multisatellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA), and gauge-based observations over India. Results show that the IMERG estimates represent the mean monsoon rainfall and its variability more realistically than the gauge-adjusted TMPA and GSMaP data. However, GSMaP has relatively smaller root-mean-square error than IMERG and TMPA, especially over the low mean rainfall regimes and along the west coast of India. An entropy-based approach is employed to evaluate the distributions of the selected precipitation products. The results indicate that the distribution of precipitation in IMERG and GSMaP has been improved markedly, especially for low precipitation rates. IMERG shows a clear improvement in missed and false precipitation bias over India. However, all the three satellite-based rainfall estimates show exceptionally smaller correlation coefficient, larger RMSE, larger negative total bias and hit bias over the northeast India where precipitation is dominated by orographic effects. Similarly, the three satellite-based estimates show larger false precipitation over the southeast peninsular India which is a rain-shadow region. The categorical verification confirms that these satellite-based rainfall estimates have difficulties in detection of rain over the southeast peninsula and northeast India. These preliminary results need to be confirmed in other monsoon seasons in future studies when the fully GPM-based IMERG retrospectively processed data prior to 2014 are available.

Launched on 27 February 2014, the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission comprises an international constellation of satellites to provide the next generation of global observations of precipitation. Built upon the success of the widely used TRMM Multisatellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA) products, the Integrated Multisatellite Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) products continue to make improvements in areas such as spatial and temporal resolutions and snowfall estimates, etc., which will be valuable for research and applications. During the transition from TMPA to IMERG, characterizing the differences between these two product suites is important in order for users to make adjustments in research and applications accordingly. In this study, the newly released IMERG Final Run monthly product is compared with the TMPA monthly product (3B43) in the boreal summer of 2014 and the boreal winter of 2014/15 on a global scale. The results show the IMERG monthly product can capture major heavy precipitation regions in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres reasonably well. Differences between IMERG and 3B43 vary with surface types and precipitation rates in both seasons. Over land, systematic differences are much smaller compared to those over ocean because of the similar gauge adjustment used in the two monthly products. Positive relative differences (IMERG > 3B43) are primarily found at low precipitation rates and negative differences (IMERG < 3B43) at high precipitation rates. Over ocean, negative systematic differences (IMERG < 3B43) prevail at all precipitation rates. Analysis of the passive microwave (PMW) and infrared (IR) monthly products from TMPA and IMERG shows the large systematic differences in the tropical oceans are closely associated with the differences in the PMW products.

Precipitation is a critical component of the Earth's hydrological cycle. Launched on 27 November 1997, TRMM is a joint U.S.–Japan satellite mission to provide the first detailed and comprehensive dataset of the four-dimensional distribution of rainfall and latent heating over vastly undersampled tropical and subtropical oceans and continents (40°S–40°N). Over the past 14 years, TRMM has been a major data source for meteorological, hydrological, and other research and application activities around the world. This short article describes how the NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) provides TRMM archive and nearreal- time precipitation datasets and services for research and applications. TRMM data consist of orbital data from TRMM instruments at the sensor's resolution, gridded data at a range of spatial and temporal resolutions, subsets, ground-based instrument data, and ancillary data. Data analysis, display, and delivery are facilitated by the following services: (1) Mirador (data search and access); (2) TOVAS (TRMM Online Visualization and Analysis System); (3) OPeNDAP (Opensource Project for a Network Data Access Protocol); (4) GrADS Data Server (GDS); and (5) Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Map Service (WMS) for the GIS community. Precipitation data application services are available to support a wide variety of applications around the world. Future plans include enhanced and new services to address data-related issues from the user community. Meanwhile, the GES DISC is preparing for the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission, which is scheduled for launch in 2014.

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