Total precipitation (PTOT) aggregated from CHIRPS v3.0 and delivered as per-pixel monthly Cloud Optimized GeoTIFFs and per-year rolling 3-month (seasonal) sums over Africa, 1981 to present. This is the rainfall backbone of the KE-ENSO Explorer’s seasonal/ENSO analysis: the twelve seasonal windows (JFM, FMA, …, DJF) are the tri-month sums the notebook compares against ENSO phase and against the drought (SPEI), vegetation (NDVI) and flood layers. A derived aggregation product, not a redistribution of the CHIRPS daily archive.
Important note
Source CHIRPS is public domain ("no restrictions on use"); these reprocessed COGs are released CC-BY-4.0 with attribution to the Climate Hazards Center, UC Santa Barbara. Seasonal windows are labelled by the calendar year in which the window ends (DJF_2020 = Dec 2019 to Feb 2020). Edge windows that the record cannot cover in full are absent (NDJ and DJF 1981; windows ending after the latest monthly file), so not every season x year combination of the template exists.
Quick start
import rioxarray
url = "https://digital-atlas.s3.amazonaws.com/domain=climate/type=observational/source=chirps-chirts-era5/region=africa/processing=monthly/variable=PTOT/PTOT-1981-01.tif"
da = rioxarray.open_rasterio(url, masked=True)library(terra)
url <- "/vsicurl/https://digital-atlas.s3.amazonaws.com/domain=climate/type=observational/source=chirps-chirts-era5/region=africa/processing=monthly/variable=PTOT/PTOT-1981-01.tif"
r <- rast(url)Intended uses
- Seasonal and ENSO-phase rainfall analysis and anomaly context in the KE-ENSO Explorer.
- Rainfall driver for interpreting the drought (SPEI), vegetation (NDVI) and flood layers.
Not recommended for
Why: Only monthly totals and 3-month sums are published here.
Use instead: The CHIRPS v3 daily archive (catalog record chirps-v3-daily).
Variables
| Variable | Type | Unit | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| PTOT | float32 | mm | Total precipitation over the period (calendar month, or 3-month seasonal sum). |
Dimensions
Axes of the cube — spatial, temporal, and domain axes.
Month of the monthly totals (YYYY-MM); the {time} token of the monthly asset.
Rolling 3-month window named by the initials of its months (JFM = Jan-Mar ... DJF = Dec-Feb). Each value covers three months; NDJ and DJF span the year boundary and are labelled by the year in which they end.
Year in which a seasonal window ends; the {year} token of the seasonal asset.
Access & use
Cloud-optimised distributions — read just the window you need directly from object storage.
Machine-readable file index: STAC Collection
Data
Per-pixel monthly precipitation totals, one COG per month.
Format: Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFF — best for single-file downloads, visualisation, and traditional GIS tools
Access a specific fileDownload
https://digital-atlas.s3.amazonaws.com/domain=climate/type=observational/source=chirps-chirts-era5/region=africa/processing=monthly/variable=PTOT/PTOT-1981-01.tif
Other access methods
File pattern: variable={variable}/{variable}-{time}.tif
Per-year rolling 3-month precipitation sums, one COG per season x year.
Format: Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFF — best for single-file downloads, visualisation, and traditional GIS tools
Access a specific fileDownload
https://digital-atlas.s3.amazonaws.com/domain=climate/type=observational/source=chirps-chirts-era5/region=africa/processing=seasonal/variable=PTOT/season=JFM/PTOT_JFM_1981_sum.tif
Other access methods
File pattern: variable={variable}/season={season}/{variable}_{season}_{year}_sum.tif
Technical metadata
The full spatial, temporal, and modelling detail behind the summaries elsewhere on this page.
Spatial
- CRS
- EPSG:4326
- Extent (W S E N)
- [-20, -40, 55, 40]
- Coverage
- Africa
- Resolution (xy)
- 0.05 deg (~5.5 km, CHIRPS native)
Temporal
- Start
- 1981-01
- End
- open (present)
Record
- Resource type
- dataset
- Created
- 2026-08-28
- Updated
- 2026-09-14
Provenance
Ordered processing steps, from source to publication.
- source
CHIRPS v3.0 quasi-global daily/monthly precipitation (station + infrared blend).
- monthly-cog
Monthly PTOT over the Africa window, written as COGs with internal overviews.
- seasonal-sum
Per-year tri-month sums over the twelve seasonal windows, written as COGs with overviews.
How to cite
Please cite the dataset and any associated peer-reviewed publications.
Steward, P., Funk, C., Peterson, P., Landsfeld, M. (2026). Monthly and seasonal precipitation from CHIRPS v3 (Africa), Africa Agriculture Adaptation Atlas [Data set]. Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT. Accessed through the CGIAR Climate Action Data Hub, https://cgiar-climate-data-hub.github.io/catalog/africa-precipitation-monthly-seasonal/.
Steward, P., Funk, C., Peterson, P., Landsfeld, M. (2026) Monthly and seasonal precipitation from CHIRPS v3 (Africa), Africa Agriculture Adaptation Atlas [Data set]. Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT. Accessed through the CGIAR Climate Action Data Hub, https://cgiar-climate-data-hub.github.io/catalog/africa-precipitation-monthly-seasonal/.
Steward, P., Funk, C., Peterson, P., Landsfeld, M. 2026. “Monthly and seasonal precipitation from CHIRPS v3 (Africa), Africa Agriculture Adaptation Atlas.” Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT. Accessed through the CGIAR Climate Action Data Hub, https://cgiar-climate-data-hub.github.io/catalog/africa-precipitation-monthly-seasonal/.
@misc{africa_precipitation_monthly_seasonal_2026,
title = {Monthly and seasonal precipitation from CHIRPS v3 (Africa), Africa Agriculture Adaptation Atlas},
author = {Steward, P. and Funk, C. and Peterson, P. and Landsfeld, M.},
year = {2026},
publisher = {Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT},
note = {Accessed through the CGIAR Climate Action Data Hub, https://cgiar-climate-data-hub.github.io/catalog/africa-precipitation-monthly-seasonal/}
}Related publications
- Funk, C., Peterson, P., Landsfeld, M., Pedreros, D., Verdin, J., Shukla, S., Husak, G., Rowland, J., Harrison, L., Hoell, A., Michaelsen, J. (2015). The climate hazards infrared precipitation with stations - a new environmental record for monitoring extremes. Scientific Data. doi:10.1038/sdata.2015.66
Contacts
Who produced this dataset, and who to reach about it.