Water is essential to life as we know it. Too much or too little water can mean the difference between life and death. While we live on a "water planet" and almost three-quarters of our planet is covered with water, less than 2.5% of that water is actually freshwater. You can read more about Earth's freshwater resources in this article, "Precious Freshness", and watch the video "Show Me the Water". See the "Freshwater Availability Toolkit" here for even more great resources.
NASA's "Global Precipitation Measurement" (GPM) mission is measuring how much precipitation is falling from the clouds to Earth- and it gets nearly global coverage with updates every half hour! You can see the latest Integrated Multi-satellite Retrievals (IMERG) for the past 7 days here. Find out how to view and interact with IMERG data here. You can also read about the evolution of this data product in the article entitled "From TRMM to GPM- The Evolution of NASA Precipitation Data".
The GPM mission is celebrating an important milestone as they have recently released the latest version of this data product which allows anyone to view and download precipitation data for the past two decades. We have developed a special activity for The GLOBE Program to guide GLOBE members through comparing and contrasting their precipitation data with that of the GPM mission. You can access this activity here. We will send a digital certificate of appreciation to any GLOBE members who submit their comparison data with us!
In addition to this activity, we will be releasing several new short video features to look at the stories behind the long record of global precipitation data. There will be a free webinar training to learn more about the IMERG data and how to access and use it on October 15th from 10 to 12 PM (ET) and repeated from 3 to 5 PM (ET).
The next time you take a sip of water or enjoy a nice fresh apple, remember that precipitation is largely to thank for our having access to freshwater resources. Find out how much precipitation GPM measured for your location, and send us your data! We are delighted to share our newest data product with you, and always appreciate the hard work you and the rest of the members of our GLOBE community are doing to ensure we better understand and protect our home planet.
