The analyses presented in this atlas show features of the tropical Pacific basin's rainfall climatologies that the authors thought would be informative and/or revealing with respect to the water-dependent economies of the islands. However, some users may wish to analyze the rainfall data in other ways, or repeat some of the analyses performed here using subsets of the 1955-96 base period or including more recent years. Therefore, the raw rainfall totals over the 1955-96 period are provided on the Internet, at location http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/experimental/pacific/DATA.html .