Washington, Sep 5 (IANS): NASA has released to publicthe most accurate and comprehensive collection of rain, snowfall and other types of precipitation data ever assembled, the US space agency said in a statement.

This new resource for climate studies, weather forecasting, and other applications is based on observations by the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory, a joint mission of NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, with contributions from a constellation of international partner satellites, the statement said.

"We are very pleased to make all these data available to scientists and other users within six months of launch," said Indian-born researcher Ramesh Kakar, a programme scientist in earth science division at NASA headquarters in Washington DC.

The GPM Core Observatory, launched from Japan Feb 27, 2014, carries two advanced instruments to measure rainfall, snowfall, ice and other precipitation.

Instruments on the GPM Core Observatory and partner satellites measure energy naturally emitted by liquid and frozen precipitation.

"With this GPM mission data, we can now see snow in a way we could not before," said Gail Skofronick-Jackson, a project scientist at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

Scientists and modelers can use the new GPM data for weather forecasts, estimating snowpack accumulation for freshwater resources, flood and landslide prediction, or tracking hurricanes, Skofronick-Jackson said.

This revolutionary information also gives us a better grasp of how storms and precipitating systems form and evolve around the planet, providing climate modelers insight into how precipitation might change in a changing climate.