CHIRPS
Free
Gauge-blended satellite rainfall at 0.05°, daily, since 1981 — the standard for drainage work in data-sparse regions.
MSWEP
ActivePrecipitation that optimally blends gauges, satellites and reanalysis at every grid cell — 3-hourly, 0.1°, global.
by GloH2O
- Pricing
- Freemium
- License
- Free for non-commercial use; paid licence for commercial FTP/API access
- Commercial use
- Permitted
- Ecosystem
- Rclone, Python, GDAL
- Platform
- Windows, macOS, Linux
About MSWEP
MSWEP (Multi-Source Weighted-Ensemble Precipitation), maintained by GloH2O, weights and merges gauge observations, satellite retrievals and reanalysis output at each grid cell according to which source performs best there — rather than picking one method globally. The result is a 3-hourly, 0.1° global precipitation record from 1979 to near-present that consistently ranks at or near the top in independent precipitation-dataset comparisons.
Non-commercial access is free via Rclone; commercial use requires a paid licence with FTP/API access. For studies that can justify the setup, it is often the single most accurate global precipitation dataset available.
Where it fits in the workflow
TerrainCatchmentRainfallRunoffRoutingHydraulicsMappingReporting
Alternatives to MSWEP
Ranked by the topics, categories and workflow stages they share with MSWEP.
GPM IMERG
Gov-Public
NASA's 30-minute, 0.1° global precipitation record — the highest time resolution of any satellite rainfall product.
PERSIANN-CDR
Free
A neural-network satellite rainfall climate data record, daily, 0.25°, purpose-built for long-term trend studies.
ARR Data Hub
Gov-Public
The official portal for Australian Rainfall & Runoff design inputs — losses, temporal patterns and preburst.
Caravan
Open Source
The open global large-sample hydrology dataset — thousands of catchments with forcing, attributes and streamflow.
ERA5 / ERA5-Land
Free
ECMWF's hourly global reanalysis — the default gap-free climate forcing record for ungauged catchments worldwide.