Oceanic precipitation frequencies produced by 10 satellite microwave algorithms submitted to the first Precipitation Intercomparison Project are compared with frequencies derived from ship reports. It is found that most algorithms yield distributions in reasonable agreement with the ship-derived climatology at low latitudes, but the majority fail to register more than very infrequent (~1%) precipitation at latitudes poleward of about 45¿, in contrast to the much larger (~10%) frequencies indicated by surface reports. Only two algorithms, both of which were based on the brightness temperature transformations of Petty <1994a,b>, appear to approximately reproduce ship-observed precipitation frequency patterns at both tropical and high latitudes. All 10 algorithms, however, appear to have difficulty producing realistic precipitation frequencies in the dry subtropical trade belts. This problem is tentatively attributed to the unique physical characteristics of precipitation in those regions.¿ 1997 American Geophysical Union