MERRA-2: Global Atmospheric Moist Tendencies on Pressure Levels

NASA's MERRA-2 reanalysis provides monthly diurnal means of atmospheric moist tendencies from 1980 to present. The collection includes assimilated tendencies for ice water, liquid water, and specific humidity across 42 pressure levels. Data is produced by NASA's Global Modeling and Assimilation Office using the GEOS model version 5.12.4.

Use Cases

• Modeling global atmospheric water vapor transport based on assimilated moist tendencies.
• Analyzing diurnal cycles of ice and liquid water tendencies across pressure levels.
• Studying long-term trends in specific humidity analysis tendencies from 1980 onward.
• Validating climate model outputs against assimilated NASA reanalysis data.

Strengths

• Data spans from 1980 to present, providing a long-term climate record.
• Includes assimilated tendencies across 42 distinct pressure levels.
• Produced by NASA's Global Modeling and Assimilation Office, an authoritative source.

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 ~3 weeks after the end of a month.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

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

Time Range

1980-present

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 00:27:06.249980; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global, 0.625 x 0.5 degree resolution