Science Use Cases Example 5: Comparison of two precipitation observational datasets

Services Used: Difference Plot of Two Variables

Datasets used: TRMM Precipitation and GPCP Precipitation

Scientific Merit: Both TRMM and GPCP are qualitatively fairly similar to each other, and depict the maximum precipitation rates over the warm pool, ITCZ, SPCZ, and Atlantic convergence zone. GPCP depicts somewhat weaker rain rates across the tropics, and slightly heavier rain rates across the north Pacific storm track (40掳N), though the differences there are fairly small.

Top: TRMM Precipitation; Middle: GPCP Precipitation; Lower: GPCP TRMM (difference)