Identification

Title

STREAM‐Sat: A novel near‐realtime quasi‐global satellite‐only ensemble precipitation dataset

Abstract

Satellite‐based precipitation observations can provide near‐global coverage with high spatiotemporal resolution in near‐realtime. Their utility, however, is hindered by oftentimes large uncertainties that vary substantially in space and time. This problem is particularly pronounced in regions which lack dense ground‐based measurements to quantify or reduce such uncertainty. Since this uncertainty is, by definition, a random process, probabilistic representations are needed to advance their operational application. Ensemble methods, in which uncertainty is depicted via multiple realizations of precipitation fields, have been widely used in numerical weather and climate prediction, but rarely in satellite contexts. Creating such an ensemble dataset is challenging due to the complexity of observational uncertainties and the scarcity of “ground truth” to characterize them. In this study, we attempt to resolve these two challenges and propose the first quasi‐global (covering all continental land masses within 50°N‐50°S) satellite‐only ensemble precipitation dataset (STREAM‐Sat), derived entirely from NASA's Integrated Multi‐SatellitE Retrievals for Global Precipitation Measurement (IMERG) and GPM's radar‐radiometer combined precipitation product (2B‐CMB). No ground‐based measurements are used to generate STREAM‐Sat, and it is suitable for near‐realtime use without extending the 4‐hr latency and 0.1°, 30‐min spatiotemporal resolution of IMERG Early. We compare STREAM‐Sat against several precipitation datasets, including global satellite‐based, rain gage‐based, atmospheric reanalysis, and merged products. While our proposed approach faces some limitations and is not universally superior to the comparison datasets in all respects, it does hold relative advantages due to its unique combination of accuracy, resolution, rainfall spatiotemporal structure, latency, and utility in hydrologic and hazard applications.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7dr30w7

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2025-03-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

<span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;font-style:normal;" data-sheets-root="1">Copyright author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.</span>

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact