Data Downloads of PERSIANN Products set another Yearly Record
CHRS data downloads in 2021
Data downloads from the Center for Hydrometeorology and Remote Sensing (CHRS) of the University of California, Irvine’s precipitation products in 2021 have exceeded those of any previous year. This includes various quasi-global, satellite-driven real-time and historical products from the PERSIANN (Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information Using Artificial Neural Networks) family—several of which were developed and maintained with support from UNESCO G-WADI and the International Center for Integrated Water Resources Management (ICIWaRM) (e.g. iRain, RainSphere and PERSIANN Dynamic Infrared Rain Rate (PDIR-Now)).
Since the creation of CHRS’s homepage and iRain on January 1st, 2010, CHRS web systems have been visited by an average of 256 people a day. The frequency of visitors has increased considerably since April 14th, 2014, and March 30th, 2016, when RainSphere and CHRS Data Portal first went online, respectively. Over the last 10 years, data downloads have been increasing at an average of 70% per year.
Residents of over 200 countries have visited CHRS web pages, including over 40 African countries. African countries are responsible for over 14,000 visits to the real-time iRain site, with Southern African countries (Namibia, South Africa, Angola and Botswana) leading the way. They are also responsible for over 13,000 visits to the data portal, combining real-time and historical data downloads, with Nigeria, Morocco, Egypt and South Africa at over 1000 each, followed by Uganda, Kenya, Sudan, Cameroon, Angola, Ghana and Algeria, with 500-800 downloads each. African visits total almost one-tenth of the total visits outside of the United States (about 140,000 since 2016).
Over this period, CHRS scientists, in partnership with UNESCO-IHP and often ICIWaRM, have hosted workshops on satellite precipitation measurements in Kazakhstan, Lebanon, the Islamic Republic of Iran, South Africa, Uganda, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, two in Italy, and three in Thailand.