The release of version 1.8 of CHIRPS on May 1st has garnered some press. CHIRPS, a joint effort between the University of California, Santa Barbara's Climate Hazard Group and USGS's Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS), is a blended data set consisting of 1981 to near-present satellite and station data. You can read more about CHIRPS here.

 

UCSB's newsletter The Current's article, titled "The State of Rain", can be found below (with quotes from Chris Funk and Greg Husak). This article has also been picked up by Noozhawk and Science Codex, both of which can be found below.