MERRA-2: Hourly Radiation Diagnostics for Global Atmosphere

1980-present hourly time-averaged radiation diagnostics from NASA's MERRA-2 reanalysis. The collection includes surface albedo, cloud area fraction, and surface incoming shortwave flux, produced by NASA's Global Modeling and Assimilation Office using the GEOS model. Data is timestamped hourly from 00:30 UTC and has a latency of about three weeks after the end of a month.

Use Cases

• Modeling surface energy balance based on surface incoming shortwave flux and surface net downward shortwave flux.
• Analyzing cloud cover and optical properties based on cloud area fraction and in cloud optical thickness.
• Studying Earth's radiative budget based on outgoing longwave radiation at the top of atmosphere.
• Monitoring albedo changes over time based on surface albedo data.

Strengths

• Covers a long temporal range from 1980 to the present.
• Produced by NASA's Global Modeling and Assimilation Office using the GEOS version 5.12.4 model.
• Provides hourly time-averaged data with a spatial resolution of 0.625 x 0.5 degrees.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data reprocessing has occurred; filename conventions differ between original and reprocessed files.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Produced by NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office using the Goddard Earth Observing System Model (GEOS) version 5.12.4.

Time Range

1980-present

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 00:52:19.337418; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global