The Western North Atlantic Ocean (WNAO) region represents a complex climate system that comprises a wide range of spatiotemporal scale phenomena: mesoscale continental convection and tropical cyclones, synoptic-scale processes (e.g., frontogenesis), and interannual climate variability (e.g., North Atlantic Oscillation). The region is influenced by the Gulf Stream current system, which gives rise to sharp spatial gradients in sea surface temperature (SST) and is responsible for significant ocean-atmosphere interactions (Small et al., 2008). In this regard, interactions between SST, surface air temperature, and winds yield strong turbulent fluxes that regulate the evolution of the atmospheric boundary layer and the regional atmospheric circulation (Nakamura et al., 2008). The WNAO climate is strongly controlled by the semipermanent North Atlantic Anticyclone, which modulates the air flow patterns and aerosol transport from North America and Africa. The diverse atmospheric and oceanic processes over WNAO are responsible for a variety of cloud morphological types: (i) stratiform boundary-layer clouds preferentially in winter and spring, (ii) shallow cumulus over the ocean during the warm season, and (iii) and deep convective and cirrus clouds associated with fronts, continental convection, and tropical cyclones. Noteworthy is the intense convective

This study presents the Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information using Artificial Neural Networks – Dynamic Infrared Rain Rate near real-time (PDIR-Now) precipitation dataset. This dataset provides hourly, quasi-global, Infrared-based precipitation estimates at 0.04°x0.04° spatial resolution with a short latency (15 – 60 minutes). It is intended to supersede PERSIANN- Cloud Classification System (PERSIANN-CCS) dataset previously produced as the near real-time product of the PERSIANN family. We firstly provide a brief description of the algorithm’s fundamentals and the input data used for deriving precipitation estimates. Second, we provide an extensive evaluation of the PDIR-Now dataset over annual, monthly, daily, and sub-daily scales. Lastly, the article presents information on the dissemination of the dataset through the Center for Hydrometeorology and Remote Sensing (CHRS) web-based interfaces. The evaluation, conducted over the period (2017-2018), demonstrate the utility of PDIR-Now and its improvement over PERSIANN-CCS at all temporal scales. Specifically, PDIR-Now improves the estimation of rain/no-rain days as demonstrated by a Critical Success Index (CSI) of 0.53 compared to 0.47 of PERSIANN-CCS. In addition, PDIR-Now improves the estimation of seasonal and diurnal cycles of precipitation as well as regional precipitation patterns erroneously estimated by PERSIANN-CCS. Finally, an evaluation is carried out to examine the performance of PDIR-Now in capturing two extreme events, Hurricane Harvey and a cluster of summer thunderstorms that occurred over the Netherlands, where it is shown that PDIR-Now adequately represents spatial precipitation patterns as well as sub-daily precipitation rates with a correlation coefficient (CORR) of 0.64 for Hurricane Harvey and 0.76 for the Netherlands thunderstorms.

Precipitation measurements with high spatiotemporal resolution are a vital input for hydrometeorological and water resources studies; decision-making in disaster management; and weather, climate, and hydrological forecasting. Moreover, real-time precipitation estimation with high precision is pivotal for the monitoring and managing of catastrophic hydroclimate disasters such as flash floods, which frequently transpire after extreme rainfall. While algorithms that exclusively use satellite infrared data as input are attractive owing to their rich spatiotemporal resolution and near-instantaneous availability, their sole reliance on cloud-top brightness temperature (Tb) readings causes underestimates in wet regions and overestimates in dry regions—this is especially evident over the western contiguous United States (CONUS). We introduce an algorithm, the Precipitation Estimations from Remotely Sensed Information Using Artificial Neural Networks (PERSIANN) Dynamic Infrared–Rain rate model (PDIR), which utilizes climatological data to construct a dynamic (i.e., laterally shifting) Tb–rain rate relationship that has several notable advantages over other quantitative precipitation-estimation algorithms and noteworthy skill over the western CONUS. Validation of PDIR over the western CONUS shows a promising degree of skill, notably at the annual scale, where it performs well in comparison to other satellite-based products. Analysis of two extreme landfalling atmospheric rivers show that solely IR-based PDIR performs reasonably well compared to other IR- and PMW-based satellite rainfall products, marking its potential to be effective in real-time monitoring of extreme storms. This research suggests that IR-based algorithms that contain the spatiotemporal richness and near-instantaneous availability needed for rapid natural hazards response may soon contain the skill needed for hydrologic and water resource applications.