During three consecutive winter seasons, between December 2021 and April 2024, several ground-based wintry precipitation measurement instruments were deployed at the University of Connecticut’s main campus. The instruments included an assortment of K-band and W-band profiling radars and Ka-Ku band scanning radars, weighing and tipping bucket pluviometers, laser disdrometers, high-speed and high-resolution cameras for quantitative precipitation measurement, weather stations, and an unmanned aircraft system for environmental variables.
The GPM - GV UConn field campaign aims to provide a dataset for validating NASA Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) products and examine the error characteristics of co-located ground-based instruments. Note, several instruments collected data before and after the main campaign. These are noted in the specific instrument's user guide. More information is available from Cerrai et. al., 2024 and Filipiak et al., 2025.
Cite the Collection
Cerrai, D., D. Wolff, A. Tokay, C. Helms, and B. Filipiak. 2025. Global Precipitation Measurement Ground Validation Campaign at the University of Connecticut Collection [indicate subset used]. Data available online [https://earthdata.nasa.gov/centers/ghrc-daac] from the NASA EOSDIS Global Hydrometeorology Resource Center Distributed Active Archive Center, Huntsville, Alabama, U.S.A. doi:10.5067/GPMGVUCONN/DATA101.
For more information on citing data archived by NASA's Global Hydrometeorology Resource Center Distributed Active Archive Center (GHRC DAAC), see NASA's data use policy.
General Characteristics
| Projects | GPM GV - UConn | |
|---|---|---|
| Platforms | Ground Stations, Unmanned Aerial System | |
| Sensors/Instruments | AIO2, APU, Ceilometer, D3R, MASC, MRR-2, PIP, Pluvio, Anemometer, SMAS, WxUAS, Rain Gauge | |
| Parameters | Reflectivity, differential reflectivity, copolar correlation coefficient, differential propagation phase, radial velocity, spectrum width, Cloud base height, backscatter, instrument parameters, cloud depth, aerosol layer, total cloud cover, boundary layer, wind speed, wind direction, ambient air temperature, relative humidity, barometric pressure, Doppler velocity, signal-to-noise ratio, spectral width, droplet size, liquid water content, melting layer, drop size distribution, rain attenuation, rain rate, radial velocity measurements, precipitation amount, precipitation rate, reflectivity in Rayleigh regime, drop diameter, drop concentration, precipitation | |
| Processing level | 1A, 1B, 2, 3 | |
| Formats | ASCII, BMP, CSV, netCDF-3, netCDF-4, PNG | |
| Location | University of Connecticut | |
| Spatial Resolution | Point, 450m with 39.75 km range, up to 8925 m aloft at 35 m increments | |
| North Boundary | 42.177 | |
| South Boundary | 41.459 | |
| East Boundary | -71.776 | |
| West Boundary | -72.740 | |
| Temporal Resolution | 1 second < Daily | |
| Start and End Times | November 30, 2021 - May 21, 2024 | |