MERRA-2 M2T1NXLFO: Hourly Land Surface Forcing Parameters

M2T1NXLFO is an hourly time-averaged 2-dimensional data collection from NASA's Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications version 2 (MERRA-2). It consists of land surface forcing parameters like bias-corrected precipitation and surface radiation, produced by NASA's Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO). The dataset covers the period from 1980 to the present with a latency of approximately three weeks after the end of each month.

Use Cases

• Modeling hydrological cycles based on bias-corrected precipitation data.
• Analyzing surface energy budgets based on shortwave and longwave radiation parameters.
• Studying land-atmosphere interactions using hourly assimilated forcing data.
• Calibrating other climate models using the high-resolution reanalysis data.
• Investigating climate trends from 1980 onward using the continuous time series.

Strengths

• Data is produced by NASA's Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO), an authoritative source.
• Covers a long temporal range from 1980 to the present.
• Provides hourly time-averaged data with a specific timestamping scheme (e.g., 00:30 UTC).
• Includes reprocessing records and documentation linked from the dataset page.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Freshness should be verified as the last metadata update was 2026-03-13.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

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

Time Range

1980-present

Freshness

Updated with a latency of ~3 weeks after the end of a month; last metadata update 2026-03-13.

Geography

Global, at 0.625 x 0.5 degree resolution