Hourly Vertically Integrated Atmospheric Energy And Water Diagnostics

1980 to present hourly time-averaged data from NASA's MERRA-2 global atmospheric reanalysis. This collection provides vertically integrated diagnostics of water and energy fluxes and tendencies, produced by NASA's Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO). Data is timestamped at the center of each hour (e.g., 00:30 UTC) and has a latency of approximately three weeks.

Use Cases

• Analyze trends in convective source of cloud ice and autoconversion loss of cloud water for climate model validation.
• Model eastward and northward fluxes of atmospheric ice, liquid, and vapor to study global moisture transport.
• Calculate total potential energy tendency and vertically integrated kinetic energy tendency for atmospheric energy budget studies.
• Assimilate hourly, 0.625x0.5 degree gridded vertically integrated diagnostics into numerical weather prediction systems.

Strengths

• Covers over 40 years of continuous global data from 1980 to present.
• Provides hourly temporal resolution for high-frequency process analysis.
• Data is produced by NASA GMAO using the GEOS 5.12.4 model, an authoritative source for reanalysis.

Limitations

• Data has a ~3-week latency after each month, limiting near-real-time applications.
• Spatial resolution is 0.625x0.5 degrees, which may be coarse for regional-scale studies.
• Potential for data reprocessing changes, requiring users to check version history.

Provenance

Source

NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) via GES DISC.

Collection Method

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

Time Range

1980 - Present

Freshness

Updated monthly with a ~3-week latency.

Geography

Global