MERRA-2 M2SMNXSLV: Monthly Atmospheric Statistics

M2SMNXSLV is a monthly mean data collection from NASA's MERRA-2 global atmospheric reanalysis. It contains aggregated daily statistics, including mean, minimum, and maximum air temperature at 2 meters and maximum precipitation rate, covering the period from 1980 to the present. The data is produced by NASA's Global Modeling and Assimilation Office using the GEOS model version 5.12.4.

Use Cases

• Analyzing monthly temperature trends based on daily mean, minimum, and maximum air temperature at 2 meters.
• Studying precipitation extremes based on maximum precipitation rate statistics.
• Investigating atmospheric variability based on the variance of parameters included in the collection.
• Climate model validation using the reanalysis data from NASA's GEOS model.

Strengths

• Data covers a long temporal range from 1980 to the present.
• Produced by NASA's Global Modeling and Assimilation Office, indicating authoritative provenance.
• Includes variance statistics for parameters, providing measures of variability.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last updated 2026-03-13 00:30:11.826385; freshness should be verified.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Generated by the Goddard Earth Observing System Model (GEOS) version 5.12.4 for atmospheric reanalysis.

Time Range

1980-present

Freshness

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

Geography

Global, at 0.625 x 0.5 degree resolution.