In early 2025, CHC released the Climate Hazards Center Infrared Precipitation with Stations version 3 (CHIRPS v3). This marks a huge step forward in our commitment to continuously improve our data products. CHIRPS v3 has several key improvements including thousands of additional stations, an increase in the spatial extent to 60°S–60°N and improvements to the satellite-only algorithm (CHIRP3) to better capture rainfall variability. Read more about these improvements on the CHC Blog and directly access the data on the CHC data archive.

Dr. Shraddhanand Shukla and Dr. Frank Davenport, researchers at the Climate Hazards Center (CHC), are part of an interdisciplinary team that will collaborate with nine public elementary schools across California to explore strategies for reducing heat exposure among students. The four-year project, led by Dr. Elizabeth Ackert from the UC Santa Barbara Department of Geography, has been awarded $2.26 million by the University of California Office of the President. Read more here

Dr. Chris Funk, Research Director at the Climate Hazards Center (CHC), collaborated with an international team of scientists to assess how rising Atmospheric Evaporative Demand (AED) is intensifying droughts worldwide. Published in Nature, the study utilized high-resolution datasets—including CHIRPS2—and found that increasing atmospheric “thirst” has made droughts 40% more severe globally over the past four decades. The research has received broad media coverage including features in: UCSB’s The Current, New York Times, Europa Press, Earth.com and SciTechDaily. Read more here

To support low-latency crop assessments from remotely sensed data, we expanded the CHC crop area estimation approach to Zimbabwe. This approach uses spectral unmixing of timeseries of high resolution Sentinel-2 data for improved differentiation of crops and natural vegetation in smallholder farms in sub-Saharan Africa. This spring, we found that there was a strong agreement between CHC’s estimated crop area and the 2024-2025 crop production data released by the Zimbabwe Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fish, Water and Rural Development. Read more

CHC continues to expand its data resources and communication to the public. In June 2025, Dr. Laura Harrison, CHC Monitoring and Forecasting Lead, presented at the Geo Health Community of Practice Heat-Health Work Group. The presentation highlighted several CHC temperature data products. This included CHIRTS historical records, a monitoring data stream based on ECMWF ERA5 and CHIRTS (CHIRTS-ERA5), and the climate projections CHC-CMIP6 dataset.

In May 2025, Dr. Chris Funk was invited to speak at the prestigious International Excellence Talks hosted by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany. This followed the International Excellence Award in 2024 which recognized Dr. Funk as a global leader in climate science.

Watch the KIT Award Ceremony and Dr. Funk’s Speech

Dr. Funk’s stay in Germany included research collaborations with an international team of scientists from KIT’s Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research and forecasters from the Kenya Meteorology Department. Their joint research aims to improve Subseasonal to Seasonal forecasts and enhancing flood early warning systems in Kenya. This work was recently presented at the NSF NCAR workshop on Subseasonal to Seasonal Predictability. Read more here

Dr. Diriba Korecha, CHC field scientist located in Ethiopia, co-authored an article with the Ethiopian Meteorological Institute (EMI) which highlights the increasing capacity of EMI over the years.

CHC has deepened collaborations with EMI over the years and we continue to work together in data sharing, capacity building, and research to improve Subseasonal to Seasonal forecasts in Ethiopia. Read more here

This year, the CHC collaborated with undergraduate students from the Department of Statistics and Applied Probability on two capstone projects. The first project, led by Dr. Laura Harrison and Dr. Greg Husak, focused on evaluating the seasonal and monthly skill of rainfall models commonly used at CHC. The second project, led by Dr. Shraddhanand Shukla and Dr. Frank Davenport, involved developing machine learning models to predict crop yields using Earth observation and climate datasets. Students also worked on developing crop yield data quality control algorithms.

The Climate Hazards Center is at the forefront of monitoring agroclimatic conditions in the worlds’ most food insecure regions. This year, in collaboration with international and local partners, we continued to produce routine agroclimate monitoring reports. Notably, we expanded the Ethiopia dekadal agroclimate monitoring reports to include Kenya and Somalia through new collaborations with the Kenya Meteorological Department, Somalia Department of Meteorology and FAO SWALIM. These reports are outlined below:

• East Africa Agroclimate Reports

• Afghanistan Agroclimate Report

• Contributions to the Seasonal Monitor

• Contributions to the GEOGLAM Crop Monitor for Early Warning