As precipitation from weather simulation data can show substantial deviations from reality, the inclusion of measurements is of major importance to reach the highest accuracy level possible. Real-time observations from radar systems are used as input for precipitation nowcasting. To estimate historical precipitation, data composites from satellites and measurement stations are available.

Historical precipitation data: Datasets

The following historical datasets, can be accessed with the meteoblue Dataset API:

IMERG	Daily precipitation history, worldwide
CMORPH (NOAA)	Hourly precipitation history, worldwide
CHIRPS2 (CHG)	Daily precipitation history, worldwide
ARC2 (NOAA)	Daily precipitation history for the African continent
LATAMCOSCH	Daily precipitation history for Latin America
CPCGBA-US	Daily precipitation history for the US

More details can be found in the technical documentation.

Real time precipitation: Radar animation with nowcasting

Precipitation nowcast data shows the evolution of precipitation from present to the near future (1-2 hours). The current conditions are provided by radar. For the next few hours, meteoblue combines radar data from various sources producing seamless radar animations, that are available for any location worldwide.

The meteoblue weather forecast data packages obtained through the meteoblue API (Package API) will include satellite, radar and measurement data automatically, if those data are available for the selected location. The accuracy of a precipitation nowcast is highly dependent on the availability, resolution and delay of the radar data, which differs for each country. An overview of the availability of real-time radar data is given in our technical documentation.