imd-gridded-rainfall·dataset
India's official daily rain record since 1901, from IMD rain gauges (0.25 deg detail)
IMD Gridded Daily Rainfall (0.25 deg)
atmosphere IMD India Meteorological Department active
In plain English
What it measures. Daily rainfall over India on a fine grid, built from the country's dense rain-gauge network — the official, ground-based record of the monsoon back to 1901.
How it's made. The India Meteorological Department interpolates thousands of rain gauges onto a 0.25-degree grid.
How & where you'd use it. The authoritative baseline for monsoon, drought and flood analysis — and the ground-truth to validate satellite rainfall (IMERG/CHIRPS). Free from IMD Pune.
What's measured
rainfallprecipitationgaugemonsoonIMDgriddedclimatedrought
Coverage & cadence
- Time span1901-01-01 → ongoing
- Spatial extent68, 6, 98, 37
What you can do with it
- Map air pollutants — NO₂, aerosols, ozone
- Track greenhouse gases and Earth's energy budget
- Feed weather and air-quality analysis
Official description
India Meteorological Department's gauge-based gridded daily rainfall over India (0.25 deg from 1901) — the authoritative ground-truth for the monsoon and the right cross-check for satellite rainfall. Free download from IMD Pune.
Get the data
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc") # free Earthdata Login
results = earthaccess.search_data(
short_name="imd-gridded-rainfall",
bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9), # your area (W,S,E,N)
temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"), # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results) # stream straight from India Meteorological Department Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package. Official links
- Open data source IMD Pune