MERRA-2: Monthly Climatological Means for Atmospheric Diagnostics, 1991-2020

NASA's MERRA-2 reanalysis provides global monthly long-term means and standard deviations for key atmospheric variables. The collection covers the period from 1991 to 2020 and includes diagnostics like air temperature, wind components, precipitation, and sea level pressure. It is produced by the NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office using the GEOS model.

Use Cases

• Analyzing interannual variability of temperature and precipitation based on monthly climatological means.
• Studying long-term wind patterns at different vertical levels based on wind component diagnostics.
• Modeling atmospheric water cycle components based on total precipitation, evaporation, and precipitable water vapor.
• Investigating surface pressure trends based on sea level and surface pressure diagnostics.

Strengths

• Based on the latest NASA global atmospheric reanalysis (MERRA-2) for the satellite era.
• Calculated from a 30-year climatological period (1991-2020), providing a stable baseline.
• Includes multiple meteorological diagnostics such as temperature, wind, pressure, and precipitation.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Derived from monthly Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications version 2 (MERRA-2) datasets.

Time Range

1991-2020

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 00:51:33.527192; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global