ISLSCP II Gauge-Based Analyses of Daily Precipitation over Global Land Areas

The objective of this work was to construct a long-term data set of daily precipitation on half degree and one degree latitude/longitude grids over the global land areas. The analyses are defined by interpolating station observations from GTS (Global Telecommunications System) gauges using the algorithm of Shepard (1968). The algorithm of Shepard (1968) has been widely used to interpolate gauge observations of monthly, pentad, and daily precipitation (Rudolf 1993, Xie et al. 1996). This algorithm is used to interpolate the irregularly distributed station observations onto grid points. The weighting coefficients are inversely proportional to the gauge-grid point distance and are adjusted by a cosine function taking into account the directional isolation of each gauge relative to all other nearby gauges. There are 6 data files with this data set.