The Southern Great Plains 1997 (SGP97) Hydrology Experiment originated from an interdisciplinary investigation, "Soil Moisture Mapping at Satellite Temporal and Spatial Scales" (PI: Thomas J. Jackson, USDA Agricultural Research Service, Beltsville, MD) selected under the NASA Research Announcement 95-MTPE-03. The Fifteen Minute Precipitation Composite is one of several precipitation datasets provided in the Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (GEWEX) Continental-Scale International Project (GCIP) Near-Surface Observation Data Set (NESOB) 1997. This precipitation composite was formed from two data sources (National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) Fifteen Minute Precipitation data (TD 3260), and fifteen minute precipitation extracted from the Department Of Energy (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Surface (ARMSFC) five minute surface data). Data from these sources were quality controlled and merged to form this precipitation composite. This composite contains data for the NESOB 1997 domain and time period (01 April 1997 through 31 March 1998). The NESOB 1997 domain is approximately 94.5W to 100.5 W longitude and 34N to 39 N latitude. Each 15-minute precipitation incremental value in this dataset was formed by summing the 5-minute precipitation values extracted from the Department Of Energy (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Surface (ARMSFC) five minute surface data. The NESOB 1997 Fifteen Minute Precipitation Composite contains seven metadata parameters and three data parameters. The metadata parameters describe the date/time, network, station and location at which the data were collected. The three data parameters repeat once for each fifteen minutes from UTC 0000 through UTC hour 2345. Data reported for a designated 15-minute observation represents data collected during the previous 15-minutes. All times are reported in UTC, and precipitation data values are reported in millimeters.