CHIRPS
Free
Gauge-blended satellite rainfall at 0.05°, daily, since 1981 — the standard for drainage work in data-sparse regions.
PERSIANN-CDR
ActiveA neural-network satellite rainfall climate data record, daily, 0.25°, purpose-built for long-term trend studies.
by Center for Hydrometeorology and Remote Sensing, UC Irvine
- Pricing
- Free
- License
- Free (NOAA Climate Data Record)
- Commercial use
- Permitted
- Ecosystem
- Python, GDAL
- Platform
- Windows, macOS, Linux
About PERSIANN-CDR
PERSIANN-CDR, developed by CHRS at UC Irvine, applies an artificial-neural-network retrieval to infrared satellite imagery to produce a daily, 0.25° global rainfall record from 1983 to near-present, engineered specifically for the consistency long-term climate and trend studies require. NOAA recognises it as an official Climate Data Record.
Served through the CHRS Data Portal (a purpose-built repository, not a general archive), it pairs well with CHIRPS as a cross-check for extreme-rainfall and drought-trend analysis over multi-decade records.
Where it fits in the workflow
TerrainCatchmentRainfallRunoffRoutingHydraulicsMappingReporting
Alternatives to PERSIANN-CDR
Ranked by the topics, categories and workflow stages they share with PERSIANN-CDR.
GPM IMERG
Gov-Public
NASA's 30-minute, 0.1° global precipitation record — the highest time resolution of any satellite rainfall product.
MSWEP
Freemium
Precipitation that optimally blends gauges, satellites and reanalysis at every grid cell — 3-hourly, 0.1°, global.
NOAA Weather and Climate Toolkit
Gov-Public
Free viewer and exporter for NEXRAD radar, satellite and climate data — out to GeoTIFF, Shapefile and NetCDF.
wradlib
Open Source
The open library for weather-radar rainfall processing — from raw volumes to engineering-ready rainfall fields.
NASA Earthdata Search
Gov-Public
The unified search portal across every NASA Earth-observation archive — SRTM, MODIS, SMAP, GPM, GRACE and more.