Source: NASA
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In a data-processing room at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, racks of high-powered computers are making a set of maps. They're not the familiar satellite map of farms, forests and cities. Instead, the maps will show what's in the atmosphere above the ground -- falling rain and snow.
The data come from the Global Precipitation Measurement mission, an international partnership led by NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. The GPM Core Observatory launched on Feb. 27, 2014, and after an initial check-out period, began its prime mission on May 29. The data began flowing as soon as the two instruments were turned on, and have been released in stages, beginning with the most basic data from the satellite, made public in June, and progressing to more complex data sets of hourly and daily rain estimates over single orbits through the summer. On Sept. 2, all Core Observatory data sets were released to the public.
But the mission goes beyond data gathering from one satellite. Ten other spacecraft from U.S. agencies and other countries all carry an instrument similar to one of the two aboard the Core Observatory. In different orbits, together their precipitation data shows where precipitation is falling across the globe. Now, with GPM and the partner satellite data made public on Sept. 2, the pieces are coming together to begin producing a full multi-satellite network of rain data into a single global map updated every 30 minutes.
Compiling observations from these 11 sources and releasing them both individually and into one unified global data set is the job of the Precipitation Processing System at Goddard.
For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/gpm-missions-how-to-guide-for-making-global-rain-maps/#.VAmqLRbIIaw