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Precipitation is a critical component of the Earth's hydrological cycle. Launched on 27 November 1997, TRMM is a joint U.S.–Japan satellite mission to provide the first detailed and comprehensive dataset of the four-dimensional distribution of rainfall and latent heating over vastly undersampled tropical and subtropical oceans and continents (40°S–40°N). Over the past 14 years, TRMM has been a major data source for meteorological, hydrological, and other research and application activities around the world. This short article describes how the NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) provides TRMM archive and nearreal- time precipitation datasets and services for research and applications. TRMM data consist of orbital data from TRMM instruments at the sensor's resolution, gridded data at a range of spatial and temporal resolutions, subsets, ground-based instrument data, and ancillary data. Data analysis, display, and delivery are facilitated by the following services: (1) Mirador (data search and access); (2) TOVAS (TRMM Online Visualization and Analysis System); (3) OPeNDAP (Opensource Project for a Network Data Access Protocol); (4) GrADS Data Server (GDS); and (5) Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Map Service (WMS) for the GIS community. Precipitation data application services are available to support a wide variety of applications around the world. Future plans include enhanced and new services to address data-related issues from the user community. Meanwhile, the GES DISC is preparing for the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission, which is scheduled for launch in 2014.
Liu et al. (Wed,) studied this question.