Pete Peterson Laura Harrison Robert Saldivar Martin Landsfeld Diego Pedreros Shraddhanand Shukla Andreas H. Fink Frank Davenport Seth H. Peterson William Turner Austin Sonnier Michael Budde Karyn Tabor James Verdin Disha Hauzaree Mohamed Naim Daniella Alaso Gregory Husak Chris Funk 2026 <p><span>The Climate Hazards Center Infrared Precipitation with Stations (CHIRPS) data stream combines: (1) a high-resolution climatology, (2) thermal infrared (TIR) geostationary satellite observations, and (3) station observations. In the past, CHIRPS version 2 (CHIRPS2) has proven to be valuable for drought monitoring, hydrologic modeling, scientific studies and agricultural decision making. Version 3 (CHIRPS3) improves each of these components. The new version, CHIRPS3 extends to 60°S/N, adopts an improved variance-preserving TIR-to-precipitation estimation method, uses many more stations and station sources than the original CHIRPS2 product, and implements gauge-undercatch correction. In this paper, we evaluate the performance of satellite-only CHIRP3, CHIRP2, IMERG, PERSIANN- CCS, and GPI using high quality interpolated data in twelve regions with dense station coverage. CHIRP3 represents both the observed mean and variance more accurately than CHIRP2. A usage section in Morocco shows that CHIRPS3 better captures the observed rainfall variability when compared to CHIRPS2. This section also demonstrates how station data should be gauge-undercatch-corrected when validating CHIRPS3.</span></p> application/pdf 10.1038/s41597-026-07096-4 en Nature The Climate Hazards Center Infrared Precipitation with Stations, version 3 article