MERRA-2 Global Aerosol Optical Depth Analysis at 3-Hourly Intervals

Aerosol optical depth analysis data from NASA's MERRA-2 atmospheric reanalysis. The dataset provides 3-hourly instantaneous global snapshots from 1980 to the present, produced by NASA's Global Modeling and Assimilation Office using the GEOS model. Data has a latency of approximately three weeks after the end of each month.

Use Cases

• Analyzing temporal trends in aerosol optical depth fields from 1980 to present.
• Validating climate model aerosol simulations against the reanalysis assimilation data.
• Studying diurnal cycles and short-term variability using the 3-hourly instantaneous data points.
• Correlating aerosol optical depth increments with specific emission events or natural phenomena.

Strengths

• Global spatial coverage at 0.625 x 0.5 degree resolution.
• Continuous temporal coverage from 1980 to present with 3-hourly frequency.

Limitations

• Specific row and column counts are not provided, limiting assessment of dataset scale.
• Data is reprocessed, requiring users to check for version changes and filename differences.

Provenance

Source

NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO).

Collection Method

Assimilation product from the Goddard Earth Observing System Model (GEOS) version 5.12.4.

Time Range

1980 to present.

Freshness

Updated with a latency of ~3 weeks after the end of a month.

Geography

Global.