We defined a grid–scale time–phase relationship between precipitation (PR) and underlying sea surface temperature (SST) as the local PR–SST relationship, and compared the spatial distribution of the relationship in the observation with that in a reanalysis dataset. An analysis using observed pentad mean data shows precipitation lagging SST for two pentads over large areas of tropical oceans. A reanalysis dataset, on the other hand, has a shorter time–phase difference between precipitation and SST than that in the observation and does not match the spatial distribution of the observed local PR–SST relationship over the tropical Indian Ocean and the tropical western Pacific. A reanalysis dataset may not capture the observed local PR–SST relationship in terms of either time–phase difference or spatial distribution because a numerical model in a data assimilation system uses SST as a lower boundary condition as well as the inhomogeneity of observations the system used.