Data and products available at the Surface Reference Data Center

The Surface Reference Data Center (SRDC) is tasked with producing global gridded rain gauge estimates in support of the Global Precipitation Climatology Experiment (GPCP). SRDC was formed in 1986 at the National Climatic Data Center but was transferred to the Environmental Verification and Analysis Center (EVAC) at the University of Oklahoma in 1998. EVAC is also home to the Comprehensive Pacific Rainfall Database (PACRAIN) and Schools of the Pacific Rainfall Climate Experiment (SPaRCE) projects, which are now core components of the SRDC dataset. Another core component is the high-resolution data from the Oklahoma Mesonet. Statistical techniques developed at EVAC allow the calculation of the error introduced by gridding irregularly spaced data. This allows for more meaningful and statistically significant validation efforts. Current SRDC products are based on several 1 degree and 2.5 degree grid boxes over Australia, Oklahoma, and the Pacific Ocean. Gridded rain gauge estimates for these boxes have been produced and are available to the research community. Error analyses comparing these estimates and the GPCP satellite-derived estimates are available for many of the boxes. New products for these boxes and for new boxes are being developed. Data ingest and analysis procedures are being developed to allow new datasets to be incorporated more efficiently. Ultimately, a comprehensive web-based interface will be created to allow access to both the rain gauge data and the derived products. More information can be found at the SRDC web site: http://www.evac.ou.edu/srdc/.