Empowering Agricultural Decision Makers Across the Globe with Improved Rainfall Forecasting Data
The timing and onset of rainfall is crucial for hundreds of thousands of farmers in the developing world when sowing, fertilizing and harvesting crops. Unpredictability in weather, and rainfall in particular, poses a serious challenge that results in missed opportunities for maximizing crop yields. SERVIR and the Climate Hazards Group (CHG) at University of California at Santa Barbara have developed an improved rainfall forecast dataset, CHIRPS-GEFS, which merges two highly recognized datasets: Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Station (CHIRPS) and the Global Ensemble Forecasting System (GEFS). The combined CHIRPS-GEFS dataset uses the higher spatial resolution of CHIRPS and the advanced forecasting ability of GEFS to provide up to a 16 day forecast updated every five days at a spatial resolution of 5 km across the globe. CHIRPS-GEFS is available for analysis and download through SERVIR's Product Catalog. Visualization of CHIRPS-GEFS daily rainfall dataset The University of Santa Barbara’s Climate Hazards Group (chg.ucsb.edu),...