Terrestrial Precipitation Analysis: Operational Method and Required Density of Point Measurements

The Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC) has established a semi-automatic data processing system to obtain monthly precipitation analyses. This includes components for the collection, storage arui quality-control of all available gauge-measured data. The calculation of areal mean precipitation on a 2.5o grid by using an objective analysis method and the merging of these analyses with results from other sources to get complete global gridded data sets are a part of the routine system as well.