SatCORPS CERES GEO Edition 4 GOES-13 Southern Hemisphere Version 1.2

CER_GEO_Ed4_GOE13_SH_V01.2 is a data product from the Satellite Cloud and Radiation Property retrieval System (SatCORPS) supporting the Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) project. It comprises hourly cloud micro-physical and radiation properties derived from GOES-13 geostationary satellite imager data at 4 km resolution, sub-sampled to 8 km, and is arranged in netCDF-4 files for each hour. The data is produced by NASA's Langley Research Center (LaRC) and is a key component of the Earth Observing System (EOS) program.

Use Cases

• Modeling the Earth's radiation budget based on derived cloud and radiation properties.
• Analyzing the diurnal cycle of cloud microphysics over the Southern Hemisphere based on hourly data.
• Validating climate models using satellite-retrieved cloud property estimates.
• Studying cloud radiative forcing using merged hourly global cloud property data.

Strengths

• Data is derived from the GOES-13 geostationary satellite, providing consistent observation of the Southern Hemisphere.
• Observations are at 4 km resolution at nadir, suggesting a detailed spatial scale.
• The CERES project is a long-term EOS program with instruments launched on multiple satellites from 1997 to 2017, indicating institutional support.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Version 1.2 is noted as identical to version 1.0 with no algorithm changes, which may indicate a lack of recent updates to the core product.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Langley Research Center (LaRC)

Collection Method

Derived from GOES-13 Imager data using SatCORPS algorithms.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-12 22:11:00.527264; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Southern Hemisphere