Painting the World with Water

  • Released Tuesday, March 31, 2015
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An animation depicting the build-up of precipitation data on the globe from the Global Precipitation Measurement constellation of satellites, resulting in the IMERG global precipitation data set.

The ten satellites in the Global Precipitation Measurement Constellation provide unprecedented information about the rain and snow across the entire Earth. This visualization shows the constellation in action, taking precipitation measurements underneath the satellite orbits. As time progresses and the Earth's surface is covered with measurements, the structure of the Earth's preciptation becomes clearer, from the constant rainfall patterns along the Equator to the storm fronts in the mid-latitudes. The dynamic nature of the precipitation is revealed as time speeds up and the satellite data swaths merge into a continuous animation of changing rain and snowfall. Finally, the video fades into an animation of IMERG, the newly available data set of global precipitation every thirty minutes that is derived from this satellite data.

An animation depicting the build-up of precipitation data on a flat map from the Global Precipitation Measurement constellation of satellites, resulting in the IMERG global precipitation data set.

The colorbar for frozen precipitation.

The colorbar for frozen precipitation.

The colorbar for liquid precipitation.

The colorbar for liquid precipitation.

This is a longer version of the globe animation of GPM and IMERG data. This version continues the IMERG precipitation data through September 30, 2014.

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

This page was originally published on Tuesday, March 31, 2015.
This page was last updated on Sunday, January 21, 2024 at 10:26 PM EST.

Missions

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Datasets used in this visualization

Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.