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Legates Surface and Ship Observations of Precipitation Climatology 0.5 x 0.5 degree V1 (RAIN_LEGATES) at GES DISC

Metadata Updated: September 19, 2025

The Legates Surface and Shipboard Rain Gauge Observations data set consists of a global climatology of monthly mean precipitation values. A global climatology of mean monthly precipitation was developed using traditional land-based gauge measurements as well as extrapolations of oceanic precipitation from coastal and island observations. Data were obtained from a variety of source archives. These data were screened for coding errors, merged, and redundant stations were removed. The resulting data base contains 24,635 independent terrestrial station records and 2223 oceanic gridpoint estimates.

  Precipitation gauge catches, however, are known to underestimate actual precipitation. Errors in the gauge catch result from wind-field deformation above the orifice of the gauge, wetting losses, and evaporation from the gauge and amount globally to nearly 8, 2, and 1 percent of the catch, respectively. A procedure was developed to estimate these errors and was used to obtain better estimates of global precipitation. Spatial variations in gauge type, air temperature, wind speed, and natural vegetation have been interpolated to the nodes of a 0.5 degrees of latitude by 0.5 degrees of longitude lattice using a spherically-based interpolation algorithm.

  The data set is used to validate general circulation model simulations of the present-day precipitation climate, for ground-based comparison with satellite-derived precipitation estimates, and as a basis for global water balance studies.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date November 12, 2020
Metadata Updated Date September 19, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date November 12, 2020
Metadata Updated Date September 19, 2025
Publisher NASA/GSFC/SED/ESD/GCDC/GESDISC
Maintainer
Identifier C1280859287-GES_DISC
Data First Published 1920-01-01
Language en-US
Data Last Modified 2025-04-01
Category GPCP, geospatial
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 026:00
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 5dd30801-bc83-4fa6-9958-9eb7df1e77a0
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Homepage URL https://cmr.earthdata.nasa.gov:443/search/concepts/C1280859287-GES_DISC.html
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -180.0 -90.0 180.0 90.0
Program Code 026:001
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 38d8a940b7f688673e596c320ee747f314f55a21898dc4a110718fe946ccbc78
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial
Temporal 1920-01-01T00:00:00Z/1980-12-31T23:59:59.999Z

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