SatCORPS CERES GEO Edition 4: GOES-12 Southern Hemisphere Cloud and Radiation Data

Hourly cloud micro-physical and radiation properties derived from GOES-12 geostationary satellite imager data at 4 km resolution. The dataset is arranged as netCDF-4 files for each hour, supporting the CERES project to estimate fluxes between instrument measurements. CERES instruments have been launched on multiple missions since 1997, including Terra, Aqua, and NOAA-20.

Use Cases

• Modeling the Earth's diurnal radiation cycle based on hourly cloud property estimates.
• Analyzing cloud micro-physical properties over the Southern Hemisphere based on geostationary satellite data.
• Estimating radiative fluxes between CERES instrument measurements based on merged global cloud properties.
• Studying long-term climate trends based on data from the CERES project, a key component of NASA's Earth Observing System.

Strengths

• Data collection is complete, providing a finalized record.
• Observations are at a high spatial resolution of 4 km at nadir.
• Derived from the Langley Research Center (LaRC) SatCORPS algorithms, a known methodology.
• Supports a long-running project with instruments launched across multiple missions from 1997 to 2017.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The description does not specify the exact temporal coverage for this Southern Hemisphere product.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Derived from GOES-12 Imager data using Langley Research Center SatCORPS algorithms.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-12 22:10:52.693620; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Southern Hemisphere