NASA’s Global Tour of Precipitation in Ultra HD (4K)

Precipitation (falling rain and snow) is our fresh water reservoir in the sky and is fundamental to life on Earth. This video shows the most detailed and worldwide view of rain and snowfall ever created and uses satellite measurements from the Global Precipitation Measurement Core Observatory, or GPM, a joint mission between NASA and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

Tracking precipitation from space with satellites provides information of where, when, and how much it rains and snows anywhere in the world and gives insight into the behavior of our weather, climate, and ecological systems.
This video is an abridged 2-D version of a Science On a Sphere production, a film that is projected onto a spherical screen developed by NOAA. On this platform, audiences can view the film from any side of the sphere and can see any part of Earth. The film concludes with near real-time global precipitation data from GPM, which is provided to Science On a Sphere roughly six hours after the observation.

Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Joy Ng
Music credit: ‘Tides’ by Ben Niblett and Jon Cotton, ‘Developing Over Time’ by Ben Niblett and Jon Cotton from the KillerTracks catalog.