Precipitation radar products

Here you'll find general information about the Swiss weather radar network.

The PRECIP product is the baseline weather radar product for precipitation estimation at ground, in Switzerland. It combines the data from all 5 C-band, Swiss weather radar stations.

The CombiPrecip (CPC) product combines in real-time the precipitation information from the weather radar network with the MeteoSwiss ground stations (rain-gauges). Furthermore, a so-called "reanalysis" of CombiPrecip is computed with an 8 days delay as to account for a-posteriori corrections in the rain-gauge values.

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The reanalysis version of CombiPrecip is being calculated for the hourly values only (00:00h, 01:00h, 02:00h etc.) and is published 8 days later automatically, where the original hourly files will be overwritten. If you are interested in these reanalysis values, please check out the hourly files 8 days later. You will find in the Metadata the "Updated" timestamp showing, that the file has been updated 8 days later.

Data download

The Open Data from MeteoSwiss may be used without restriction; the source must be cited when reproducing or redistributing ("Source: MeteoSwiss").

✅ By using 'Open Data' from MeteoSchweiz, you confirm that you have taken note of the Terms of use.

Download files per parameter automatically via FSDI's REST API: https://data.geo.admin.ch/api/stac/v1/collections/ch.meteoschweiz.ogd-radar-precip

The STAC Browser can be a useful tool to facilitate the use of the API: https://data.geo.admin.ch/browser/index.html#/collections/ch.meteoschweiz.ogd-radar-precip

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In the STAC Browser, click on the 'Next' button under 'Items' to find data from the previous few days.

Please note that the STAC item for the following day has already been created. From midnight onwards, this item will continuously fill with files ('Assets').

Data structure

The data is split by parameter, calendar date (see STAC 'items' respectively 'features') and time resolution. It is provided via a rolling time window covering the last 14 days.

The available parameters are:

Parameter	Time resolution; Update frequency	Filename format
PRECIP	5 minutes	RZCyyjjjHHMM\*.\*01.h5
PRECIP-SV	5 minutes	TZCyyjjjHHMM\*.\*01.h5
Combiprecip 60-minute total	10 minutes	CPCyyjjjHHMM\*_00060.\*01.h5
Combiprecip 60-minute total reanalysis	60 minutes; 8 days later	...\*_00060.\*01.h5

Naming convention of the files:

For PRECIP: RZCyyjjjHHMMKK.XYZ.h5

• RZC = product code
• yy = two last digit of the year
• jjj = Gregorian day of product creation (1-366)
• HHMM = time of product creation (UTC)
• KK = (reserved)
• XYZ = x01 (reserved)

For PRECIP-SV: TZCyyjjjHHMMKK.XYZ.h5

• TZC = product code
• yy = two last digit of the year
• jjj = Gregorian day of product creation (1-366)
• HHMM = time of product creation (UTC)
• KK = (reserved)
• XYZ = x01 (reserved)

For CombiPrecip: CPCyyjjjHHMMQ_nnnnn.XYZ.h5

• CPC = product code
• yy = two last digit of the year
• jjj = Gregorian day of product creation (1-366)
• HHMM = product time (UTC)
• Q = CombiPrecip quality code (from 0 to 9, where 9 is the best)
• nnnnn = accumulation time (in minutes)
• XYZ = x01 (reserved)

Data format

The data is provided in the ODIM HDF5 standard format, described here with an estimated volume of less than 1 MB per file.

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Please note, that for the processing of HDF5 files, specialised software packages may be needed.

The coordinate system is Swiss LV95 / EPSG:2056.

Metadata

The metadata is included in each HDF5-File.

Parameter	Long Name	Standard Unit	Temporal Aggregation
CPC	Combiprecip 60-minute total	mm	Precipitation accumulation over 1 hour
CPCH	Combiprecip 60-minute total reanalysis	mm	Precipitation accumulation over 1 hour
RZC	PRECIP	mm/h	Instantaneous rain rate
TZC	PRECIP-SV	mm/h	Instantaneous rain rate