SatCORPS CERES GEO: Hourly Cloud and Radiation Properties from GOES-13

Hourly cloud microphysical and radiation properties derived from GOES-13 geostationary satellite imager data, processed by Langley Research Center algorithms. The data set is arranged as files for each hour at 4 km resolution (sub-sampled to 8 km) in netCDF-4 format. It was created in support of the CERES project, a key Earth Observing System program with instruments launched between 1997 and 2017.

Use Cases

• Modeling the Earth's diurnal radiation cycle based on hourly cloud property estimates.
• Analyzing cloud microphysical properties based on satellite-derived retrievals.
• Estimating radiative fluxes between CERES instrument measurement times.
• Studying Northern Hemisphere cloud and atmospheric dynamics based on GOES-13 imager data.

Strengths

• Data is derived from the GOES-13 Imager, a well-documented satellite platform.
• Provides hourly temporal resolution for analyzing diurnal cycles.
• Offers 4 km spatial resolution at nadir, sub-sampled to 8 km.
• Part of the long-running CERES project, with instruments launched from 1997 to 2017.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and total dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The description notes Version 1.2 is identical to version 1.0 with no algorithm changes.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Derived from GOES-13 Imager data using Langley Research Center SatCORPS algorithms.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-12 22:10:24.049012; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Northern Hemisphere