MERRA-2 Hourly Atmospheric Diagnostics at Standard Levels

MERRA-2 M2T1NXSLV provides hourly time-averaged, two-dimensional meteorological diagnostics at standard vertical levels. The dataset is produced by NASA's Global Modeling and Assimilation Office using the GEOS model and covers the period from 1980 to the present. Data includes parameters like air temperature at 2 meters, wind components at multiple levels, sea level pressure, and total precipitable water vapor.

Use Cases

• Model surface wind patterns using 10-meter and 50-meter wind component fields for renewable energy site assessment.
• Analyze long-term trends in total precipitable water vapor and 2-meter air temperature for climate change studies.
• Assimilate sea level pressure and 500 hPa temperature data into numerical weather prediction models for forecast initialization.
• Study atmospheric dynamics by correlating wind components at 250 hPa with surface pressure fields across the global grid.

Strengths

• Global spatial coverage at 0.625x0.5 degree resolution.
• Temporal coverage spans from 1980 to present, providing over 40 years of data.
• Hourly time-averaged data with timestamps at the center of each hour (e.g., 00:30 UTC).

Limitations

• Data has a latency of approximately 3 weeks after the end of each month, limiting real-time applications.
• Reprocessing events create filename inconsistencies between original and updated data files.
• Specific row counts, file sizes, and completeness metrics for individual parameters are not provided.

Provenance

Source

NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO).

Collection Method

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

Time Range

1980 - present.

Freshness

Updated monthly with a ~3-week latency.

Geography

Global.