MERRA-2: Monthly Analyzed Meteorological Fields at 42 Pressure Levels

1980-present monthly atmospheric reanalysis data produced by NASA's Global Modeling and Assimilation Office. The dataset contains instantaneous 3-dimensional analyzed meteorological fields, including temperature, wind components, specific humidity, ozone mixing ratio, and geopotential height across 42 pressure levels. It is generated using the Goddard Earth Observing System Model version 5.12.4 and has a latency of approximately three weeks after the end of each month.

Use Cases

• Modeling atmospheric circulation patterns based on wind component data
• Analyzing long-term temperature trends across different atmospheric pressure levels
• Studying ozone distribution and variability using the ozone mixing ratio field
• Calculating atmospheric stability and energy budgets based on geopotential height and temperature
• Investigating moisture transport and humidity using the specific humidity parameter

Strengths

• Data spans from 1980 to the present, providing a continuous long-term record
• Includes analyzed fields across 42 distinct pressure levels
• Produced by NASA's Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO), an authoritative source
• Contains quadratic information such as variance and covariance for certain parameters

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment
• Data is reprocessed, and filename changes may complicate version tracking

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Collection Method

Generated by the Goddard Earth Observing System Model (GEOS) version 5.12.4 as part of the Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications version 2 (MERRA-2) reanalysis.

Time Range

1980-present

Freshness

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

Geography

Global coverage at a 0.625 x 0.5 degree resolution.