TOGA COARE shipborne radar-rainfall products

Rainfall products derived from radar data often consume vast amounts of sto rage space and are time-consuming to analyze. Shipborne radar data collecte d during the Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere (TOGA) Coupled Ocean-Atmosphe re Response Experiment (COARE) provide an extensive data set to examine rai nfall characteristics in the tropical Western Pacific Ocean. TOGA COARE shi pborne radar-rainfall products have been organized into a database with eff icient storage and access time characteristics. Software for reading and vi sually browsing the data has been developed and made available to provide u sers with a convenient method to study the data set.