Hourly Land Surface Forcings from NASA MERRA-2 Reanalysis

Hourly time-averaged land surface forcing parameters, including bias-corrected precipitation and surface radiation fluxes. The dataset provides global coverage from 1980 to the present, produced by NASA's Global Modeling and Assimilation Office. Data is time-stamped at the central point of each hour, from 00:30 to 23:30 UTC.

Use Cases

• Model hydrological runoff and soil moisture by analyzing the bias-corrected precipitation field.
• Validate surface energy balance in climate models using shortwave and longwave radiation at surface data.
• Study diurnal cycles in land-atmosphere interactions using the hourly time-stamped data series.
• Assimilate land surface forcing observations into numerical weather prediction systems.

Strengths

• Global spatial coverage at 0.625 x 0.5 degree resolution.
• Continuous temporal coverage from 1980 to present, updated with ~3-week latency.
• Includes key forcing parameters like bias-corrected precipitation and surface radiation.

Limitations

• Spatial resolution (approx. 50-60 km) is coarse for local-scale studies.
• Reanalysis data incorporates model assumptions, which may introduce biases compared to pure observations.
• Data reprocessing history requires checking documentation for version consistency.

Provenance

Source

NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) via the Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC).

Collection Method

Produced by the GEOS version 5.12.4 model, assimilating satellite and observational data (Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications version 2).

Time Range

1980 to present.

Freshness

Updated monthly with a latency of approximately three weeks.

Geography

Global.