MERRA-2 M2T3NPQDT: 3-Hourly Atmospheric Moist Tendencies

MERRA-2 M2T3NPQDT is a 3-dimensional, 3-hourly time-averaged data collection from NASA's Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications version 2. It contains assimilations of moist tendencies on 42 pressure levels, such as tendencies of ice water due to dynamics and specific humidity due to moist processes. The dataset is produced by NASA's Global Modeling and Assimilation Office and covers the period from 1980 to the present.

Use Cases

• Modeling atmospheric moisture transport based on assimilated moist tendencies.
• Analyzing the dynamics of ice and liquid water in the atmosphere based on pressure-level data.
• Studying specific humidity trends over time using the 3-hourly time-averaged fields.
• Validating climate model outputs against reanalysis data for moist processes.

Strengths

• Data is produced by NASA's Global Modeling and Assimilation Office, a leading authority.
• Covers a long temporal range from 1980 to the present.
• Provides data at a high temporal resolution of every three hours.
• Includes data on 42 distinct pressure levels for vertical analysis.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data has a latency of approximately 3 weeks after the end of a month.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Global Modeling and Assimilation Office.

Collection Method

Generated using the Goddard Earth Observing System Model (GEOS) version 5.12.4 as part of the MERRA-2 reanalysis.

Time Range

1980-present

Freshness

Updated regularly with a latency of ~3 weeks; last metadata update was 2026-03-13.

Geography

Global coverage at 0.625 x 0.5 degree resolution.