MERRA-2: Monthly Ocean Surface Diagnostics from NASA Reanalysis

NASA's MERRA-2 reanalysis provides monthly mean ocean surface diagnostics from 1980 to present. The collection includes sea surface temperature, latent energy flux, sensible heat flux, and net downward longwave and shortwave fluxes. Produced by NASA's Global Modeling and Assimilation Office using the GEOS model, data is updated with a latency of about three weeks after each month.

Use Cases

• Modeling global ocean heat budgets based on net downward longwave and shortwave flux data
• Analyzing sea surface temperature trends over the satellite era
• Studying ocean-atmosphere energy exchange using latent and sensible heat flux parameters
• Investigating variance in ocean surface parameters for climate variability research

Strengths

• Data covers a long temporal range from 1980 to present
• Produced by NASA's Global Modeling and Assimilation Office using the GEOS 5.12.4 model
• Includes variance metrics for certain ocean surface parameters

Limitations

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

Provenance

Source

NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO)

Collection Method

Assimilated global atmospheric reanalysis using the Goddard Earth Observing System Model (GEOS)

Time Range

1980-present

Freshness

Updated monthly with a latency of about three weeks after the end of each month.

Geography

Global, 0.625 x 0.5 degree resolution