Global Carbon Monoxide and Ozone Diurnal Diagnostics

MERRA-2 provides monthly diurnal means of assimilated carbon monoxide and ozone diagnostics from 1980 to present. NASA's Global Modeling and Assimilation Office produced this global atmospheric reanalysis using the GEOS model version 5.12.4. Data fields are time-averaged 2-dimensional grids at 0.625 x 0.5 degree resolution.

Use Cases

• Analyze diurnal cycles of total column ozone using hourly data fields time-stamped from 00:30 to 23:30 UTC.
• Model global carbon monoxide column burden and surface concentration trends from 1980 onward.
• Study sources and sinks of carbon monoxide by examining assimilated emission and chemical production diagnostics.
• Validate atmospheric chemistry models against the reanalysis data for carbon monoxide and ozone properties.

Strengths

• Continuous global coverage from 1980 to present, updated with a latency of approximately 3 weeks.
• Provides hourly diurnal means for each month across a 0.625 x 0.5 degree latitude/longitude grid.
• Assimilated data product from NASA's official reanalysis, MERRA-2, using the GEOS 5.12.4 model.

Limitations

• Data has undergone reprocessing with filename changes, requiring careful version tracking.
• Spatial resolution of 0.625 x 0.5 degrees may be coarse for regional-scale analysis.
• Assimilated diagnostics represent model outputs constrained by observations, not direct measurements.

Provenance

Source

NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) via GES DISC.

Collection Method

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

Time Range

1980 to present.

Freshness

Updated monthly with ~3 week latency.

Geography

Global.