MERRA-2 M2IUNPANA: Analyzed Meteorological Fields at 42 Pressure Levels

MERRA-2 M2IUNPANA is an instantaneous 3-dimensional monthly diurnal means data collection produced by NASA's Global Modeling and Assimilation Office. It contains analyzed meteorological fields at 42 pressure levels, including temperature, wind components, specific humidity, ozone mixing ratio, and geopotential height, as monthly means of data fields every six hours. The dataset covers the period from 1980 to the present with a latency of approximately three weeks after the end of a month.

Use Cases

• Analyzing global atmospheric temperature trends based on the temperature field at multiple pressure levels.
• Studying wind patterns and circulation based on the wind component fields.
• Modeling atmospheric moisture transport based on the specific humidity field.
• Investigating ozone distribution and chemistry based on the ozone mixing ratio field.
• Calculating geopotential height for pressure-level analysis.

Strengths

• Data is produced by NASA's Global Modeling and Assimilation Office, a authoritative source.
• Covers a long temporal range from 1980 to the present.
• Includes 42 distinct pressure levels for vertical atmospheric analysis.

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

Generated using the Goddard Earth Observing System Model (GEOS) version 5.12.4.

Time Range

1980-present

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 00:52:37.374506; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global