Data Access – OLD

Time and area subsetting tool
(rainfall and soil moisture)

Extract a time-series for a given location or an area-average from January 1983 to present. This tool is recommended for users conducting time-series analysis.Variable(s) available: rainfall and soil moisture (historical and forecasts).

Individual file download
(rainfall)

Download individual rainfall files (netCDF format at 0.0375° resolution) and accompanying quicklook files (png format). This is useful if you want to look at rainfall estimates for a single event or over a short time-period. You can also browse these files using HTTP file listing here.

Individual file download
(soil moisture)

Download individual soil moisture files (netCDF format at 0.25° resolution) and accompanying quicklook files (png format). This is useful if you want to look at agricultural drought conditions at given point in time. You can also browse these files using HTTP file listing here.

Zipped file by year
(rainfall)

Rainfall estimates for a given time-step and year compressed into a single zip file. This is useful if you need to download multiple files at once. If you need to download the entire archive, we suggest using a download utility such as wget. An example (bash shell) script to download the entire archive can be found here.

Regridded files
(rainfall)

Rainfall estimates interpolated to a common grid (0.25°, 0.5° and 1.0°). These regridded files enable users to handle the data with greater ease. Interpolation has been carried out using the robust interpolation package within cf-python.

Additional TAMSAT products

Rainfall metrics (beta)
(rainfall)

User-relevant drought and excess rainfall metrics derived from TAMSAT rainfall estimates (netCDF and accompanying PNG quicklooks). We have recently begun releasing user-relevant metrics that can support with the monitoring of drought and excess rainfall conditions. We are still developing these products, so the current version may be updated. Eventually, these metrics will be generated for the full TAMSAT record.

There are several options to download TAMSAT rainfall and soil moisture estimates:

Extract a time-series for a given location or an area-average from January 1983 to present. This tool is recommended for users conducting time-series analysis.

Variable(s) available: rainfall and soil moisture (historical and forecasts).

Download individual rainfall files (netCDF format at 0.0375° resolution) and accompanying quicklook files (png format). This is useful if you want to look at rainfall estimates for a single event or over a short time-period. You can also browse these files using HTTP file listing here.

Download individual soil moisture files (netCDF format at 0.25° resolution) and accompanying quicklook files (png format). This is useful if you want to look at agricultural drought conditions at given point in time. You can also browse these files using HTTP file listing here.

Rainfall estimates for a given time-step and year compressed into a single zip file. This is useful if you need to download multiple files at once. If you need to download the entire archive, we suggest using a download utility such as wget. An example (bash shell) script to download the entire archive can be found here.

Variable(s) available: rainfall and soil moisture (historical).

Rainfall estimates interpolated to a common grid (0.25°, 0.5° and 1.0°). These regridded files enable users to handle the data with greater ease. Interpolation has been carried out using the robust interpolation package within cf-python.

Variable(s) available: rainfall.

Additional TAMSAT products

User-relevant drought and excess rainfall metrics derived from TAMSAT rainfall estimates. We have recently begun releasing user-relevant metrics that can support with the monitoring of drought and excess rainfall conditions. We are still developing these products, so the current version may be updated. Eventually, these metrics will be generated for the full TAMSAT record.

Rainfall dataset properties

Products
  • rainfall estimates
  • rainfall anomalies (relative to the 1983-2012 climatology)
Latest version v3.1 (released 1st July 2020; see here for product release notes)
Time-step daily, pentadal, dekadal, monthly, seasonal (DJF, MAM, JJA and SON)
Spatial domain African continent, including Madagascar (N: 38.025°, S: -35.9625°, W: -19.012°, E:51.975°)
Dimensions 1974 pixels (latitude) by 1894 pixels (longitude)
Spatial resolution 0.0375° (approx. 4km)
Temporal coverage 1st January 1983 to present day
Latency within 2 days after each pentad – the products are created on the following days of each month;

  • the daily and pentadal products are created on the 1st, 6th, 11th, 16th, 21st and 26th
  • the dekadal products are create on the 1st, 11th and 21st
  • the monthly products are created on the 1st
  • the seasonal products are created every 3 months on the 1st March, 1st June, 1st September, and 1st December
Data format netCDF
Available variables ‘rfe‘, ‘rfe_filled‘

Soil moisture dataset properties

Products
  • soil moisture estimates
  • soil moisture anomalies (relative to the 2001-2020 climatology)

Soil moisture is expressed as the soil moisture availability factor for C4 grasses (also known as beta or fsmc for users familiar with the JULES land surface model). This variable relates how much plant growth is restricted by the available soil moisture and is what is served through the data subsetting tool. This variable is what we recommend for agricultural drought monitoring for common crops such as maize.

We also produce the moisture content of each soil moisture layer [depths: 0-10cm, 10-35cm, 35-100cm, 100-300cm], which is also known as smcl for users familiar with the JULES land surface model. This is available upon request.
Latest version v2.3.0 (released 1st January 2024)
Time-step daily, pentadal, dekadal, monthly, seasonal
Spatial domain African continent, including Madagascar (N: 37.375°, S: -35.375°, W: -17.875°, E:51.375°)
Dimensions 292 pixels (latitude) by 278 pixels (longitude)
Spatial resolution 0.25° (approx. 25km)
Temporal coverage 1st January 1983 to present day [historical record]; out to 160 days [forecasts]
Latency within 2 days after each pentad – the products are created on the following days of each month;

  • the daily and pentadal products are created on the 1st, 6th, 11th, 16th, 21st and 26th
  • the dekadal products are create on the 1st, 11th and 21st
  • the monthly products are created on the 1st
  • the seasonal products are created every 3 months on the 1st March, 1st June, 1st September, and 1st December
Data format netCDF
Available variables ‘sm_c4grass‘

 

Product release notes

For information about new releases, updates or changes relating to the TAMSAT operational rainfall estimates, please refer to the TAMSAT dataset release notes, found here.

 

Citing TAMSAT data

If you make use of TAMSAT data, please observe the TAMSAT Data Policy. In accordance with our data policy, when using TAMSAT data, you are required to cite the following papers:

  • Maidment, R. I., D. Grimes, E. Black, E. Tarnavsky, M. Young, H. Greatrex, R. P. Allan et al. (2017). A new, long-term daily satellite-based rainfall dataset for operational monitoring in Africa Nature Scientific Data 4: 170063 DOI:10.1038/sdata.2017.63.
  • Tarnavsky, E., D. Grimes, R. Maidment, E. Black, R. Allan, M. Stringer, R. Chadwick, F. Kayitakire (2014). Extension of the TAMSAT Satellite-based Rainfall Monitoring over Africa and from 1983 to present Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climate DOI 10.1175/JAMC-D-14-0016.1
  • Maidment, R., D. Grimes, R.P.Allan, E. Tarnavsky, M. Stringer, T. Hewison, R. Roebeling and E. Black (2014). The 30 year TAMSAT African Rainfall Climatology And Time series (TARCAT) data set Journal of Geophysical Research DOI: 10.1002/2014JD021927

 

For further information on TAMSAT data products, see our rainfall estimates FAQ or our soil moisture estimate FAQ page.