Last Updated: March, 2012

The binary files contained within these subdirectories are climatological
rainfall estimates over the Africa continent utilizing the 'climatology-method' 
of the RFE (i.e. ARC).   


At present, the climatological record is from 1983-2011.  

** Daily Means (mm/day) consist of an average of every Jan 1, Jan 2,... Dec 31
over the 29+ year ARC data record.
** Mean Dekadal Totals and Mean Monthly Totals (mm) consist of the summation of the 
daily means for the dekad, and month, respectively.  


DATA DETAILS:

For -  ftp://ftp.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/fews/AFR_CLIM/ARC2/"YYYY"/ 
NAMING CONVENTION:  "all_products_CLIM.bin.YYYYMMDD.gz"
  (where: YYYY is 4-digit year, MM is 2-digit month, DD is 2-digit day)
                           

For -  ftp://ftp.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/fews/AFR_CLIM/CLIMATOLOGY_DATA 
NAMING CONVENTION:  /DAILY_MEANS/clim.daily.bin.MMDD.gz
                    /MEAN_DEKADAL_TOTALS/clim.dekadal.bin.MMK.gz
					/MEAN_DEKADAL_TOTALS/clim.monthly.bin.MM.gz
  (where: YYYY is 4-digit year, MM is 2-digit month, DD is 2-digit day, K is dekad)
					
					
FILE FORMAT FOR DATA ACCESS:

Data files are written in binary data format and consist of one record (one array)
of floating point rainfall estimates in mm (after unzipping).  Each array equals 
751*801 elements, pertaining to 751 pixels in the x direction, and 801 pixels in 
the y direction.  After reshaping to a 0.1 degree grid, this will yield a spatial 
domain spanning -40S to 40N in latitude, and -20W to 55E in longitude encompassing the 
Africa continent.  Missing data is denoted as -999.0.