Where the Rain Fell

Pick any location on Earth, select a year, and see how its monthly rainfall compared to the long-term average. The baseline is the 1991–2020 climatological normal — the standard reference period used by meteorologists worldwide. Bars above the baseline indicate wetter-than-average months; bars below indicate drier ones.

The data comes from ERA5, a global reanalysis dataset produced by ECMWF that reconstructs the climate system by combining numerical weather modelling with historical observations. It covers the entire globe — land and ocean — at roughly 28 km resolution, making it possible to explore rainfall patterns anywhere from the Amazon basin to the tropical Pacific.

For in-browser performance, the data is aggregated from the original 0.25° grid to a 1° grid (~111 km) using a conservative area average. Each value represents a true cell mean, not a point sample.

Data Source

ERA5 monthly averaged reanalysis data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), produced by ECMWF. ERA5 provides a consistent, long-term record of atmospheric and surface variables at global coverage from 1940 to present.

Hersbach, H. et al. (2023): ERA5 monthly averaged data on single levels. Copernicus Climate Change Service, ECMWF. doi:10.24381/cds.f17050d7

Built with

VisQuill — a reactive vector graphics framework for interactive data visualization. visquill.com