MERRA-2 M2IMNPASM: Monthly Atmospheric Reanalysis on 42 Pressure Levels

42 pressure levels contain assimilated meteorological fields, including temperature, wind components, water vapor, and ozone. NASA's Global Modeling and Assimilation Office produced this global atmospheric reanalysis using the GEOS model version 5.12.4. The dataset covers the period from 1980 to the present, with a latency of approximately three weeks after each month.

Use Cases

• Climate model validation based on assimilated temperature and wind fields
• Long-term atmospheric trend analysis based on monthly mean data spanning 1980-present
• Weather pattern research based on vertical pressure velocity and water vapor parameters
• Ozone layer studies based on ozone mass mixing ratio data

Strengths

• Produced by NASA's Global Modeling and Assimilation Office, an authoritative source
• Covers a long temporal range from 1980 to the present
• Includes 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

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Assimilated reanalysis produced by the Goddard Earth Observing System Model (GEOS) version 5.12.4.

Time Range

1980-present

Freshness

Updated monthly with a latency of ~3 weeks; last metadata update was 2026-03-13.

Geography

Global