NASA POWER: Worldwide Solar and Meteorological Data for Energy Modeling

NASA's Prediction of Worldwide Energy Resources (POWER) project provides over 380 satellite-derived meteorology and solar energy parameters. The data is available at hourly, daily, monthly, and climatology temporal levels, with daily meteorological data starting from 1981 and solar data from 1984. It is updated nightly to maintain near real-time availability.

Use Cases

• Model building system energy performance based on hourly solar and meteorological parameters.
• Support agricultural project planning based on climatology and daily meteorological time series.
• Aid renewable energy development research based on surface solar irradiance data.
• Improve data accessibility for climate resilience studies based on the multi-temporal analysis ready data.

Strengths

• Contains over 380 satellite-derived parameters.
• Data is updated nightly, providing near real-time availability.
• Offers data at four temporal levels: hourly, daily, monthly, and climatology.
• Time series for meteorology is available from 1981, providing a long historical record.

Limitations

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

Provenance

Source

NASA Langley Research Center, Applied Sciences Program.

Collection Method

Satellite-derived Earth observation data from sources like CERES and GMAO, processed into Analysis Ready Data.

Time Range

Daily meteorology from 1981, solar from 1984; hourly data from 1984/2001 onward.

Freshness

Updated nightly with a 2-7 day latency.

Geography

Global.