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STAR Satellite Rainfall Estimation - Global Hydro-Estimator

Global Hydro-Estimator (GHE)
Imminent Product Retirement and Data Location Changes - February 2025

The Global Hydro-Estimator (GHE) is being retired, and its successor product is the Enterprise Rain Rate (ERR), previously referred to on this site as SCaMPR.

Starting immediately, the various Hydro-Estimator pages for different regions and time cadences are being retired from the STAR site. Those pages are now all redirected to this page.

The McIDAS AREA files for GHE will be available at Amazon Web Services (AWS), and will continue be updated until GHE's retirement is finalized. See: https://noaa-ghe-pds.s3.amazonaws.com/index.htmlthis link opens in a new window

These data files cover the period from 2019 through the present, showing instantaneous rain rates on a global view, refreshed every 15 minutes. Product source data come from the GOES-R series, Meteosat, and Japan's Himawari satellites.
• https://noaa-ghe-pds.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html#rain_rate/this link opens in a new window

The sectorized GHE images previously delivered on this site will no longer be produced. Only NetCDF source data files will be supplied going forward, served at AWS.

NOAA's Office of Satellite Products and Operations hosts GHE visualizations here: https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/products/atmosphere/ghe/


The Global Hydro-Estimator (GHE) uses geostationary infrared (IR) data from geostationary satellites to estimate rainfall rates. Estimates of rainfall from satellites can provide critical rainfall information in regions where data from gauges or radar are unavailable or unreliable, such as over oceans or sparsely populated regions.

Satellite-based estimates of rainfall have been used operationally at NOAA / NESDIS since the late 1970's, starting with the largely manual Interactive Flash Flood Analyzer (IFFA; Scofield 1987), and then progressing to the fully automated Auto-Estimator (Vicente et al. 1998). The Hydro-Estimator (H-E; Scofield and Kuligowski 2003) is the current-generation operational algorithm at NESDIS and has been used since 2002.

Estimates are produced routinely every 15 minutes for the entire globe from 64°S to 64°N using available geostationary data over the Western Hemisphere (GOES) Europe, Africa, and western Asia (METEOSAT), and eastern Asia (Himawari).

Details on the algorithm, which also uses data from numerical weather prediction models to correct for evaporation of raindrops, topographic influence on rainfall, and other factors, can be found at the "Technique Description" link and also in Scofield and Kuligowski (2003).

References

Scofield, R. A., 1987: The NESDIS operational convective precipitation estimation technique. Mon. Wea. Rev., 115, 1773-1792, DOI: 10.1175/1520-0493(1987)115<1773:TNOCPE>2.0.CO;2this link opens in a new window.

Scofield, R. A., and R. J. Kuligowski, 2003: Status and outlook of operational satellite precipitation algorithms for extreme-precipitation events. Mon. Wea. Rev., 18, 1037-1051, DOI: 10.1175/1520-0434(2003)018<1037:SAOOOS>2.0.CO;2this link opens in a new window

Vicente, G. A., R. A. Scofield, and W. P. Menzel, 1998: The operational GOES infrared rainfall estimation technique. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 79, 1883-1898, DOI: 10.1175/1520-0477(1998)079<1883:TOGIRE>2.0.CO;2this link opens in a new window.