GPCP V3.3¶

Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) Version 3.3 Satellite-Gauge Combined Precipitation

Update delayed

At a glance¶

Note on period: V3.3 Monthly starts in 1983-01 and V3.3 Daily in 1998-01; as of 2026-10-12 both run to 2025-12 at GES DISC (extended on 2026-05-01). At NOAA, V2.3 Monthly (from 1979-01) is available through the 2026-09 preliminary file, and Daily V1.3 (from 1996-10) through 2026-07. V3.3 Daily for October–December 2025 was computed with IMERG V07 Late because IMERG V07 Final processing ended in September 2025.

Overview¶

GPCP is a global precipitation analysis coordinated by the WCRP GEWEX Data and Assessment Panel (GDAP). It merges passive-microwave and infrared satellite estimates with the GPCC rain-gauge analysis to give globally complete precipitation over land and ocean. The current version, V3.3, provides 0.5° monthly (1983–) and daily (1998–) fields; the Daily is built from IMERG and "adds up" to the Monthly. The older V2.3 (2.5°, monthly, 1979–) has been the reference in a large body of literature and is still updated monthly, but it is officially superseded by V3.3.

What changes with the successor¶

GPCP V2.3 → GPCP V3.3¶

Transition: 2025-08

In August 2025 the NOAA CDR Program released V3.3 as the new Climate Data Record and marked V2.3 and V1.3 as superseded. The grid goes from 2.5° (1° for daily) to 0.5°, and every input dataset has been replaced.

Sources: NOAA NCEI — GPCP Monthly CDR Version 3.3 (C01725) · NOAA NCEI — GPCP Daily CDR Version 3.3 (C01726) · GES DISC — GPCP V3.3 Release Notes · NCEI GPCP Monthly CDR V2.3 Climate Algorithm Theoretical Basis Document (CDRP-ATBD-0848) · Huffman et al. (2023), The New Version 3.2 GPCP Monthly and Daily Precipitation Products, J. Climate

Available variables¶

V3.3 names are the in-file variable names from the GES DISC README (Table 3); V2.3 names are from the NCEI THREDDS aggregation. The V3.3 Monthly quality index (equivalent number of gauges) is listed in the README with a space in its name, so check the exact name in a downloaded file.

instantaneous mean accumulated maximum minimum static — instantaneous: value at the time stamp · mean/accumulated/maximum/minimum: over the indicated interval · static: does not change with time

V3.3 Monthly (GPCPMON, 0.5°)¶

V3.3 Daily (GPCPDAY, 0.5°)¶

V2.3 Monthly (NCEI CDR, 2.5°)¶

The full variable list is in the official documentation.

How to get the data¶

• NASA GES DISC — GPCPMON V3.3 (monthly) — HTTPS / OPeNDAP / Earthdata Search / earthaccess
  • Requires a free NASA Earthdata Login. Files are named GPCPMON_L3_yyyymm_V3.3.nc4.
• NASA GES DISC — GPCPDAY V3.3 (daily) — HTTPS / OPeNDAP / Earthdata Search / earthaccess
  • Files are named GPCPDAY_L3_yyyymmdd_V3.3.nc4.
• NOAA NCEI — GPCP Monthly CDR (V3.3 / previous V2.3) — HTTPS / THREDDS / AWS and Google Cloud No login needed
  • No account needed. As of 2026-10, the NCEI direct-download directory and the AWS bucket (noaa-cdr-precip-gpcp-monthly-pds) contain only V2.3 (v02r03) files.
• NOAA NCEI — GPCP Daily CDR (V3.3 / previous V1.3) — HTTPS / AWS and Google Cloud No login needed
  • As of 2026-10, the AWS bucket (noaa-cdr-precip-gpcp-daily-pds) holds V1.3 (v01r03, 1°) files.
• Copernicus CDS — GPCP v3.3 redistribution — Web download / CDS API
  • A copy redistributed by C3S (v3.3 added in 2025-12). As of 2026-10 the catalogue lists coverage to 2025-12. Requires an ECMWF account.

Example code¶

Run earthaccess.login() once with your NASA Earthdata account first. For recent months without an account, download V2.3 from NOAA's AWS bucket as shown in the comment below.

# pip install earthaccess xarray netCDF4
import earthaccess
import xarray as xr

earthaccess.login()
results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="GPCPMON", version="3.3", temporal=("2024-01", "2024-12")
)
files = earthaccess.download(results, "./gpcp")
ds = xr.open_mfdataset(files, combine="by_coords")
pr = ds["sat_gauge_precip"]          # mm/day, monthly mean precipitation rate
print(pr.sel(lat=slice(33, 39), lon=slice(124, 132)).mean(("lat", "lon")).values)

# V2.3 (2.5°) without an account: https://noaa-cdr-precip-gpcp-monthly-pds.s3.amazonaws.com/data/2026/
#   gpcp_v02r03_monthly_dYYYYMM_cYYYYMMDD.nc (preliminary files: gpcp_v02r03-preliminary_...)

Practical tips¶

• V2.3 (2.5°) and V3.3 (0.5°) have different climatologies and trends. Use the same version as the studies you compare against, and always state the version (V2.3 or V3.3) in your paper.
• NOAA states that the accuracy of individual daily estimates at fine resolution is limited. Use V3.3 Daily for large-scale and statistical analyses rather than single extreme-rainfall events.
• Because V3.3 Daily depends on IMERG, extensions into 2026 may lag until IMERG Final moves to V08. For recent daily precipitation, also look at IMERG Early and Late.
• V2.3 preliminary files are later replaced by final files for the same month, so re-download the last few months before finalizing results.
• V3.3 values are at grid-box centres on a 0.5° grid. Do not reuse region definitions built for the 2.5° grid (e.g. the 1.25° offset) unchanged.

Notices and change history¶

References for your paper¶

Dataset citation¶

V3.3 Monthly (GES DISC) — DOI 10.5067/MEASURES/GPCP/DATA306

@misc{gpcp_v33_monthly,
  author    = {Huffman, G. J. and Behrangi, A. and Bolvin, D. T. and Nelkin, E. J.},
  title     = {{GPCP} Version 3.3 Monthly {SG} Combined Precipitation Data Set},
  year      = {2025},
  publisher = {Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC)},
  address   = {Greenbelt, MD, USA},
  doi       = {10.5067/MEASURES/GPCP/DATA306},
  note      = {Accessed DD MMM YYYY}
}

V3.3 Daily (GES DISC) — DOI 10.5067/MEASURES/GPCP/DATA307

@misc{gpcp_v33_daily,
  author    = {Huffman, G. J. and Behrangi, A. and Bolvin, D. T. and Nelkin, E. J.},
  title     = {{GPCP} Version 3.3 Daily Precipitation Data Set},
  year      = {2025},
  publisher = {Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC)},
  address   = {Greenbelt, MD, USA},
  doi       = {10.5067/MEASURES/GPCP/DATA307},
  note      = {Accessed DD MMM YYYY}
}

NOAA CDR V3.3 Monthly (NCEI) — DOI 10.25921/bw8h-xr11

@misc{gpcp_v33_monthly_cdr,
  author    = {Adler, Robert and Gu, Guojun and Behrangi, Ali and Huffman, George and Bolvin, David and Nelkin, Eric and {NOAA CDR Program}},
  title     = {{NOAA} Climate Data Record ({CDR}) of the Global Precipitation Climatology Project ({GPCP}) Monthly Version 3.3},
  year      = {2025},
  publisher = {NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information},
  doi       = {10.25921/bw8h-xr11},
  note      = {Accessed DD MMM YYYY}
}

NOAA CDR V3.3 Daily (NCEI) — DOI 10.25921/9b5m-ka77

@misc{gpcp_v33_daily_cdr,
  author    = {Adler, Robert and Gu, Guojun and Behrangi, Ali and Huffman, George and Bolvin, David and Nelkin, Eric and {NOAA CDR Program}},
  title     = {{NOAA} Climate Data Record ({CDR}) of the Global Precipitation Climatology Project ({GPCP}) Daily Version 3.3},
  year      = {2025},
  publisher = {NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information},
  doi       = {10.25921/9b5m-ka77},
  note      = {Accessed DD MMM YYYY}
}

V2.3 Monthly (NCEI CDR, previous version) — DOI 10.7289/V56971M6

@misc{gpcp_v23_monthly_cdr,
  author    = {Adler, R. and Wang, J.-J. and Sapiano, M. and Huffman, G. and Chiu, L. and Xie, P.-P. and Ferraro, R. and Schneider, U. and Becker, A. and Bolvin, D. and Nelkin, E. and Gu, G. and {NOAA CDR Program}},
  title     = {Global Precipitation Climatology Project ({GPCP}) Climate Data Record ({CDR}), Version 2.3 (Monthly)},
  year      = {2016},
  publisher = {NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information},
  doi       = {10.7289/V56971M6},
  note      = {Accessed DD MMM YYYY}
}

Reference papers¶

GPCP V3.2 paper (V3 methodology; listed as a reference by the NOAA V3.3 CDR) — DOI 10.1175/JCLI-D-23-0123.1

@article{huffman2023gpcpv32,
  author  = {Huffman, George J. and Adler, Robert F. and Behrangi, Ali and Bolvin, David T. and Nelkin, Eric J. and Gu, Guojun and Ehsani, Mohammad Reza},
  title   = {The New Version 3.2 Global Precipitation Climatology Project ({GPCP}) Monthly and Daily Precipitation Products},
  journal = {Journal of Climate},
  volume  = {36},
  number  = {21},
  pages   = {7635--7655},
  year    = {2023},
  doi     = {10.1175/JCLI-D-23-0123.1}
}

GPCP V2.3 paper — DOI 10.3390/atmos9040138

@article{adler2018gpcpv23,
  author  = {Adler, Robert F. and Sapiano, Mathew R. P. and Huffman, George J. and Wang, Jian-Jian and Gu, Guojun and Bolvin, David and Chiu, Long and Schneider, Udo and Becker, Andreas and others},
  title   = {The Global Precipitation Climatology Project ({GPCP}) Monthly Analysis (New Version 2.3) and a Review of 2017 Global Precipitation},
  journal = {Atmosphere},
  volume  = {9},
  number  = {4},
  pages   = {138},
  year    = {2018},
  doi     = {10.3390/atmos9040138}
}

Acknowledgements¶

Cite the dataset DOI that matches where you downloaded the data (GES DISC or NOAA CDR) with your access date, and also cite Huffman et al. (2023) for V3 or Adler et al. (2018) for V2.3. For NOAA CDR data, also follow the citation guidance in the CDR Use Agreement.

Information on the datasets used in this study was compiled with the help of the Korean Climate Data Navigator (KCDN) (Sim, 2026; https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23300923).

Links¶

• GES DISC — GPCPMON V3.3 dataset page
• GPCP V3.3 Monthly ATBD
• NOAA NCEI — GPCP Monthly CDR product page
• NOAA NCEI — GPCP Monthly CDR V3.3 metadata and citation page