MERRA-2 M2TMNXGLC: Monthly Land Ice Surface Diagnostics

NASA's MERRA-2 reanalysis provides monthly mean assimilated land ice surface diagnostics globally from 1980 to the present. The collection includes parameters such as fractional glaciated snow cover, snow mass, snow depth, and snow mass residual due to densification. It is produced by NASA's Global Modeling and Assimilation Office using the GEOS model version 5.12.4.

Use Cases

• Modeling snow mass changes over glaciated surfaces based on assimilated snow mass data.
• Analyzing trends in fractional snow cover on glaciers based on snow cover fraction data.
• Studying snow densification processes based on total snow mass residual data.
• Assessing spatial variance in land ice surface conditions based on variance parameters.

Strengths

• Data covers a long temporal range from 1980 to present.
• Produced by NASA's Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO), indicating authoritative source.
• Includes multiple specific land ice surface diagnostics such as snow mass and fractional cover.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data reprocessing history requires checking linked documentation, adding complexity.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Assimilated reanalysis using the Goddard Earth Observing System Model (GEOS) version 5.12.4.

Time Range

1980-present

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13; data has a latency of ~3 weeks after the end of a month.

Geography

Global