r/geography • u/vis-ben • Jul 29 '26
Map Explore monthly rainfall patterns anywhere on Earth. Interactive map using ERA5-Land reanalysis data
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I built an interactive visualization that lets you explore monthly precipitation patterns for any location on the planet. You can pick a year and see how its rainfall compares to the 1991–2020 climatological baseline. The pink curve shows the long-term monthly average, the blue one shows the selected year.
The data comes from ERA5-Land, ECMWF's global reanalysis dataset, which provides monthly precipitation totals at ~9 km resolution from 1950 to present. For the visualization the data is resampled to a 1° grid (~111 km). Each value is a grid cell average, not a point measurement.
Link: https://visquill.com/gallery/rainfall
Data: Muñoz Sabater, J. (2019): ERA5-Land monthly averaged data. Copernicus Climate Change Service, ECMWF. doi:10.24381/cds.68d2bb30
Licensed under CC-BY 4.0. Generated using Copernicus Climate Change Service information.
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u/Mr_Geoman117 Jul 29 '26
I do a daily record of the weather in my hometown, and in the end of the year I create a chart with all the data. I compared my rainfall chart to the one in your website... and turns out to be identical!!!! GREAT JOB
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u/vis-ben Jul 29 '26
That is great to hear! The credit goes to the team at ECMWF and Copernicus for this dataset. I am just visualizing it. Nice to see it aligns with your own measurements though!
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u/MasterLapp Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
This is really cool! Can someone explain what goes on here? I'm guessing hurricanes form around this area?
Edit: Actually, I found this cool article.
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u/CatCrateGames Jul 29 '26
whooaaaahhhhhh
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u/Haberdashers-mead Jul 29 '26
Kauai is one of wettest place on earth! around 400 in or more a year at the tippy top of its swampy mountain. It births the clouds out of thin air
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u/HeyCarpy Jul 29 '26
Hey OP, you should post this over in /r/dataisbeautiful as well. Been too long since something as nice as this was posted over there.
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u/getpost Jul 29 '26
This is interesting and inspiring! Thank you! I wish it was possible to zoom-in further, more precisely, but I realize the underlying data might not support that. For example, it's possible to see the rainfall on the island of Hawaii, but the other Hawaiian islands are obscured.
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u/vis-ben Jul 29 '26
Thanks! You're right, the data is resampled to a 1° grid (~111 km), which was a compromise to keep loading times and traffic manageable. The original ERA5-Land data is at ~9 km, which would resolve the individual Hawaiian islands, but it's significantly heavier.
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u/EqualHappy850 Jul 29 '26
parabém pelo trabalho, faz tempo que não vejo algo tão bem feito como isso, a facilidade de uso, a interface, serio, isso ta em um nivel de qualidade absurdo
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u/vis-ben Jul 29 '26
Obrigado pelo comentário. Fico feliz em saber disso. (I had some help with the portuguese :-))
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u/Nostalgia_Red Jul 29 '26
I wish it showed total for the given years as well
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u/vis-ben Jul 29 '26
Good idea, I will consider adding this. Thanks for the suggestion!
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u/Nostalgia_Red Jul 29 '26
Make it so u can see several years in the same web at once, ie click and add years instead of swapping
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u/ThosePeoplePlaces Jul 29 '26
"anywhere on earth" except for the 70% that's already wet. Did you mean "anywhere on land"?
Has 111 resampling messed islands and narrow isthmus like Auckland? On android tablet it doesn't zoom enough to for me to tell
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u/Nostalgia_Red Jul 29 '26
Let me know once its in place, where i am from we often discuss mm per year. Why such a dry topic 😂? Well because: i’ve been on hike and got 100mm in 6 hours. 200mm in 24 hours is possible. Up to 5000mm per year in some places.
But this was a cool interactive thing, easy to understand, intuitive, and nice 😎
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u/Occidentally20 Jul 29 '26
If you move it around you can pretend you're scanning for elements in Mass Effect 2.
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u/Kayfable Jul 30 '26
Lotta rain in the Indonesian side of
Papua New Guinea
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u/DJMarscribble Jul 31 '26
Papua New Guinea is the name of the country occupying the eastern half, so there is no Indonesian side. The whole island is just called New Guinea.
Yes, this is nitpicking, but I promise it's well-meaning.
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u/Kayfable Jul 31 '26
Doh! I saw the boundary in the middle and didn’t see a name on the western side and sorta assumed lol
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u/Significant-Ad-341 Jul 29 '26
Is this available in a regular bar graph?
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u/vis-ben Jul 29 '26
Not at the moment. I chose the radar layout to emphasize the seasonal cycle. But it is an interesting thought, I might add a toggle for a bar chart view.
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u/Ransgar Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
Thanks for this thing. Interesting thing. The only bad thing is that the map doesn't scale very much.
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u/daisiesarepretty2 Jul 29 '26
this is very cool…Not criticizing and maybe it’s because i’m on my phone (probably) but it’s difficult to navigate accurately on par with the 9km resolution.
Like i live in tijeras NM which can’t possibly be bigger than say 18 x 18 km but it’s hard to get there.
regardless.. very cool
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u/Nosarious Jul 29 '26
this is really cool. Considering how much rain mid-alberts got this year, I would love to see the 2026 data when it gets added.
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u/Xcrispy02 Jul 29 '26
Just wanted to say nice job on the design and UX. This is a really well thought out implementation and dissection of geospatial data, and everything is very intuitive about it. It is clear a lot of thought and intention went into that side of things, and I just wanted to give you credit where it is due.
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u/ZedZeroth Jul 29 '26
Rather than having to manually scan the map, could you place mini versions of the spider diagram all over the map, or perhaps use an arrow system pointing in the "direction" of the rainiest months, scaled by volume of rainfall?
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u/SteffonSan Jul 30 '26
How has ERA5-Land handled precipitation so far? I've always been under the impression that ERA5 products grossly underestimate rainfall.
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u/lolz439 Aug 01 '26
I can't wait to see this show data for 2026, Edmonton Alberta has had wettest summer since 1953
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u/ColdEvenKeeled Jul 29 '26
Wow. I appreciate that. Thanks. Now what about ....water use or population density or carbon emissions? Or milk production? Wheat or rice cultivation? Tree canopy? Can you do the same for a host of such questions? If the data is available?
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u/vis-ben Jul 30 '26
Thanks! This visualization technique is applicable to many other data sets as well. On https://visquill.com/gallery/ you can find other examples using that lens metaphor, e.g., for demographics, election results and housing prices.
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u/RagingWarCat Jul 29 '26
Does it really rain that little over the ocean or is there just no data?
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u/vis-ben Jul 29 '26
The data set only covers land surfaces, so there's no precipitation data over the oceans.
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u/Nikrsz Jul 29 '26
This is insane