The Climate Hazards Center Infrared Precipitation with Stations, Version 3
The Climate Hazards Center Infrared Precipitation with Stations (CHIRPS) data stream combines: (1) a high-resolution climatology, (2) thermal infrared (TIR) geostationary satellite observations, and (3) station observations. In the past, CHIRPS version 2 (CHIRPS2) has proven to be valuable for drought monitoring, hydrologic modeling, scientific studies and agricultural decision making. Version 3 (CHIRPS3) improves each of these components. The new version, CHIRPS3 extends to 60°S/N, adopts an improved variance-preserving TIR-to-precipitation estimation method, uses many more stations and station sources than the original CHIRPS2 product, and implements gauge-undercatch correction. In this paper, we evaluate the performance of satellite-only CHIRP3, CHIRP2, IMERG, PERSIANN- CCS, and GPI using high quality interpolated data in twelve regions with dense station coverage. CHIRP3 represents both the observed mean and variance more accurately than CHIRP2. A usage section in Morocco shows that CHIRPS3 better captures the observed rainfall variability when compared to CHIRPS2. This section also demonstrates how station data should be gauge-undercatch-corrected when validating CHIRPS3.
Authors
- Frank Davenport (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2409-768X)
- Karyn Tabor (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9648-3056)
- Chris Funk (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9254-6718)
- Austin Sonnier
- G. J. Husak (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2647-7870)
- William Turner (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2812-3948)
- Robert Saldivar
- Andreas H. Fink (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5840-2120)
- Shraddhanand Shukla (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0077-6733)
- S. Peterson (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6988-2457)
- Pete Peterson (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9742-5379)
- J. P. Verdin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0238-9657)
- Diego Pedreros (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9943-7373)
- Michael Budde (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9098-2751)
- Mohamed Naim (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0006-9011-9348)
- Daniella Alaso (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-0768-3454)
- M. F. Landsfeld
- Laura Harrison
- Disha Hauzaree
Institutions
- Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (DE)
- University of Messina (IT)
- United States Geological Survey (US)
- Goddard Space Flight Center (US)
- University of California, Santa Barbara (US)
- Istituto Universitario di Studi Superiori di Pavia (IT)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Scientific Data
- Published
- 2026-04-11
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-026-07096-4
- Primary Topic
- Precipitation Measurement and Analysis
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00