Update: The Precipitation & Water Cycle Data website is currently being added to and improved during the summer of 2007 due to Tyler's return to CREW's internship program. Many features are planned to be added including more advanced statistical analysis of model/observation data over longer time periods, the inclusion of more datasets and variables, the development of a world-wide drought index, and much more.

The Precipitation & Water Cycle Data website at the Center for Research on Environment and Water (CREW) was created in the summer of 2006 by Tyler Ruff under the mentoring of Dr. Paul Houser. The project goal was to develop a near real-time, automated water-cycle diagnostic tool that would make a number of critical global observations, analyses, and forecasts of water cycling available in an easily interpretive and highly informative graphical format.

Most of the observation data are either provided by the University of Maryland's Cooperative Institute for Climate Studies data archive or the Climate Prediction Center's FTP servers. The GFS future forecast data are shared with the Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies (COLA). All map processing is done using the Grid Analysis and Display System (GrADS). All data sets used on this website are available through the CREW GDS server.

Most website graphics are updated daily at around 2:30am and 2:30pm, whereas the GFS future validation section is updated around 3am daily. Some data sets (mainly past observation data) are not uploaded at the same time every day, and there is typically a 2-3 day lag between the last available observation data set and the present time. If there is a problem with any of the data sets or an error on the website, please contact the webmaster.

Tyler would like to thank Dr. Paul Houser for his guidance and direction involved with the science, Aaron Knister for his help with several coding issues, Jennifer Adams for her help with GrADS, and Megan Larko for her Linux and server support.