Monthly Extreme Weather Indices from Global Atmospheric Reanalysis

Monthly extreme detection indices derived from NASA's MERRA-2 global atmospheric reanalysis. The collection contains indices for temperature extremes like heatwaves and cold spells, and precipitation extremes like dry and wet days, covering the period from January 1980 to present. It is produced by the NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) using the Goddard Earth Observing System Model.

Use Cases

• Modeling heatwave frequency and duration using derived temperature extreme indices.
• Analyzing trends in dry day and wet day intensity from precipitation extreme indices.
• Training models to correlate cold spell indices with other atmospheric reanalysis variables.
• Benchmarking climate model outputs against the 1991-2020 climatology-based extreme indices.

Strengths

• Data spans from January 1980 to present, providing over 40 years of monthly global coverage.
• Indices are computed using a consistent 30-year climatology baseline (1991-2020) for version 2.

Limitations

• Specific row counts, column details, and data resolution are not provided in the input.
• Data has a latency of approximately three weeks after the end of the previous month, limiting real-time analysis.

Provenance

Source

NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO).

Collection Method

Derived from daily Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications version 2 (MERRA-2) reanalysis data.

Time Range

January 1980 to present.

Freshness

Updated monthly with a ~3-week latency.

Geography

Global.