MSWEP

Mul­ti-Source Weight­ed-Ensem­ble Pre­cip­i­ta­tion (MSWEP) is a ful­ly glob­al his­tor­i­cal pre­cip­i­ta­tion dataset (1979–2019) with a 3‑hourly tem­po­ral and 0.1° spa­tial res­o­lu­tion.

Ben­e­fits of MSWEP

• MSWEP takes advan­tage of the com­ple­men­tary strengths of gauge‑, satellite‑, and reanaly­sis-based data to pro­vide reli­able pre­cip­i­ta­tion esti­mates over the entire globe.
• In two com­pre­hen­sive large-scale eval­u­a­tions, MSWEP per­formed best over­all (Beck et al., 2017; Beck et al., 2019).
• Tru­ly glob­al cov­er­age (includ­ing ocean areas) at 3‑hourly 0.1° res­o­lu­tion (oth­er satel­lite-based datasets such as CMORPH and IMERG are lim­it­ed to lat­i­tudes <50/60°).
• Con­sis­tent pre­cip­i­ta­tion record from 1979 until the near present, enabling trend and drought assess­ments.
• Dai­ly (in addi­tion to month­ly) gauge cor­rec­tions using obser­va­tions from ~77,000 sta­tions across the globe.
• When apply­ing the dai­ly gauge cor­rec­tions, MSWEP accounts for dif­fer­ences in gauge report­ing times.

Val­i­da­tion

MSWEP has been part of two com­pre­hen­sive eval­u­a­tion stud­ies. In the first, 22 grid­ded pre­cip­i­ta­tion datasets were val­i­dat­ed using obser­va­tions from ~70,000 gauges and hydro­log­i­cal mod­el­ing for ~9000 catch­ments glob­al­ly:

• Beck, H. E., N. Ver­gopolan, M. Pan, V. Lev­iz­zani, A.I.J.M. van Dijk, G.P. Wee­don, L. Broc­ca, F. Pap­pen­berg­er, G.J. Huff­man, and E.F. Wood: Glob­al-scale eval­u­a­tion of 22 pre­cip­i­ta­tion datasets using gauge obser­va­tions and hydro­log­i­cal mod­el­ing, Hydrol­o­gy and Earth Sys­tem Sci­ences 21(12), 6201–6217, 2017.

In the sec­ond, 26 pre­cip­i­ta­tion datasets were eval­u­at­ed using Stage-IV gauge-radar data for the CONUS:

• Beck, H. E., Pan, M., Roy, T., Wee­don, G. P., Pap­pen­berg­er, F., van Dijk, A. I. J. M., Huff­man, G. J., Adler, R. F., and Wood, E. F.: Dai­ly eval­u­a­tion of 26 pre­cip­i­ta­tion datasets using Stage-IV gauge-radar data for the CONUS, Hydrol­o­gy and Earth Sys­tem Sci­ences 23(1), 207–224, 2019.

Method­ol­o­gy

See the fol­low­ing paper for a detailed descrip­tion of the MSWEP V2.2 method­ol­o­gy:

• Beck, H. E., Wood, E. F., Pan, M., Fish­er, C. K., Miralles, D. M., van Dijk, A. I. J. M., McVicar, T. R., and Adler, R. F.: MSWEP V2 glob­al 3‑hourly 0.1° pre­cip­i­ta­tion: method­ol­o­gy and quan­ti­ta­tive assess­ment, Bul­letin of the Amer­i­can Mete­o­ro­log­i­cal Soci­ety 100(3), 473–500, 2019.

See the tech­ni­cal doc­u­men­ta­tion for code exam­ples on read­ing the data and the ver­sion his­to­ry.

Data access

MSWEP is released under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license and thus may not be used for com­mer­cial pur­pos­es. For com­mer­cial use of MSWEP, please con­tact us. To apply for non-com­mer­cial access to MSWEP, please send us a request using the fol­low­ing form. Please note that each request is checked man­u­al­ly, so make sure that your answers are com­plete and cor­rect.

MSWEP request form

Acknowl­edge­ments

MSWEP is devel­oped by Hylke Beck (Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty). The pre­cip­i­ta­tion dataset devel­op­ers are grate­ful­ly acknowl­edged for pro­duc­ing and mak­ing avail­able their datasets. The work was sup­port­ed through IPA sup­port from the U.S. Army Corps of Engi­neers’ Inter­na­tion­al Cen­ter for Inte­grat­ed Water Resources Man­age­ment (ICI­WaRM), under the aus­pices of UNESCO.